Morbreen Erobrer Vulkanen
by library.of.trifles
Summary: Hans isn't evil, he's cursed! (Which I totally buy because his song with Anna was really sweet and everyone knows Disney Rule #43, You Can't Lie In Song.) Also,he might be secretly in love with the Ice Queen. Also, is there something off about those trolls or what? M for eventual smut and abusive family situations. Post-movie, canon-compliant, HELSAAAAAAA.
1. False Escape

Hans would have died in Kongenhaavn, the capital port-city of his homeland, if not for the coming of the worst winter the Southern Isles had ever seen. The cerulean sky bleached white like a dying coral reef, seeds refused to germinate in the hardened earth, streams iced over so swiftly you could see fish preserved mid-wriggle beneath the solid surface. There was actually very little snow. Everything just froze up where it lay. Such a thing had never happened in the Southern Isles before.

So unnatural a freeze, everyone knew, could only be a curse from the hands of the Snow Queen, sent to punish Hans Westergaard and all his countrymen for his crimes. When Arendelle sent aid to every nation touched by the winter _except_ the Southern Isles, the theories were practically confirmed. Crown Prince Caleb declared it to be more than an outpouring of hurt royal feelings: it was an act of war, which could only be answered by immediate escalation. Their father had always been able to contain Caleb's volatile nature; but King Jahan's health had suffered in the freeze, and Caleb's fomentation was gaining support. If the winter didn't end soon, or King Jahan didn't get a better hold on his hot-headed eldest son, there could be a confrontation between the Southern Isles and Arendelle. There could even be a _war_. Everyone knew it, including Hans, which was why he left.

One of Lars's men smuggled Hans onto a ship bound for Corona, a journey of five days. He was within a few footsteps of discovery the whole way, and dared not leave his hiding place even to relieve himself. He ate sparingly of the hardtack Lars had provided him for the journey, collected rainwater in a jug to drink, and voided himself into a jar he found rolling around on deck. This he emptied over the side of the ship, in the dark of night when he was less likely to be spotted. More than once in the heaving inky confusion of a night at sea, light-headed from hunger and thirst, he confused the two containers.

Hans had never fancied being a mere passenger on a ship. Being a stowaway was worse.

Things improved in Corona, where no one was on the lookout for any version of Hans; he doubted even Eugene Fitzherbert, whom he'd sat next to and conversed with several times two years ago in Arendelle, would recognize him now. It was not just the beard or the constellation of scars that now covered his face and arms and neck (his brothers having seen fit to leave their most lasting marks where they would be most humiliatingly apparent). It was not the nose that had been broken several times and set _almost_ straight each time, but not quite. Nor was it that the very shape of him had changed, the sleek and catlike brawn of his earlier days replaced by sinewy hardness, the muscles of his arms and back as tough as boiled shoe leather.

The change was both simpler and more complete than the mere redecorating of his outer shell. Hans did not carry himself like a prince anymore. He was nobody now, and looked it.

Lars had given him a purse filled with coins, with which he purchased passage to Arendelle on the earliest available vessel. Recognizable or not, Hans had no desire to spend the intervening four days on the town, although in another life he would have found much to interest him about Corona's port city. He rented a room at an inn and bartered stable-services for board. Lars's purse was more than sufficient to keep him, but he was more comfortable around horses than people. And anyway, shoveling shit took his mind off the fact that if all went well, in three weeks he would be dead.

* * *

The journey to Arendelle took fifteen days. For two weeks, Hans succeeded in not thinking about what he was about to do.

For one day, he thought of nothing else.

He had not told Lars his intention, of course. If nothing else, Lars would have refused to help him sneak off the palace grounds. Likely, he would also have pled with his younger brother, reasoned with him, tried to sway him, gotten Helga to weep on his bosom, that sort of thing, and it might even have worked.

" _Caleb doesn't seriously think Queen Elsa is responsible for all— all this_ ," he heard now in Lars's voice. The conversation was imagined, as were most of Hans's conversations these days. " _This winter— it is not an act of war. Caleb knows that, deep down. And if it were, how would your death solve it?"_

Now, leaning out over the railing of the stout trading ship that carried him every moment closer to his doom, he mentally recited the reasoning behind his journey north.

" _This cursed winter is my doing, so I should bear responsibility for ending it. If it is wrath against me that brought the winter, might not vengeance bring about its end? If the winter is not soon lifted, Caleb's desire to attack Arendelle will only gain support. Break the winter, break his plans. And you know my death would please him, too. As soon as our father is dead I expect him to arrange for me to follow anyway; should not my death serve a higher purpose, then, of ending the curse and fostering peace between nations?"_

Lars of course would argue that Caleb didn't want his youngest brother's head on an icicle, not _really_ , not _anymore_ , though neither of them would believe it. To avoid the whole debate Hans had withheld his true motive for sneaking out of the Southern Isles. He had merely said that he could not live there any longer. Lars had hugged him and looked sad and given him clothes and food and a purse full of money, and that was that.

One thing galled Hans more than the knowledge that most of his brothers wanted him dead, and that all of this might really be his fault: if Elsa had sent winter to the Southern Isles, she had sent it knowing it would kill the weak, the poor, the infirm, long before it killed even an outcast member of the royal family. Such cruelty he would not have expected of her. How had the last two years changed her?

Years ago, Hans had stood in the snow and wind on the side of a mountain and begged her not to give in to the violent urges that grow up in the dark corners of the mind. His entreaty had been completely sincere, and he had felt much more sympathy for her than he ever had toward himself. Even now he wondered how much of it had been addressed to her, how much to himself.

" _Do not become the monster they fear you are,"_ a younger Hans had implored a younger Queen Elsa. His entreaty had seemed to work, at least for a little while.

What kind of monster had she become, to punish a whole country for one man's crime?

* * *

Hans did not have any particularly bright plan for gaining an audience with the Queen. He simply walked through the capitol city of Arenby, always toward the castle, until a guard stopped him and asked him his business.

"I am Hans of the Southern Isles. The Queen of Arendelle wishes to see me." _Or will, as soon as she realizes I just broke exile._

The guard looked as if he did not know whether to laugh at this or shout for reinforcements. Reinforcements came anyway: another guard had recognized Hans through the scars and nose and wiry frame and beard, and he was dragged with surprising swiftness and discretion to a prison cell.

It occurred to Hans during the six hours he waited in that cell that the Queen might decide not to see him at all. Dying of starvation in a chilly cell in Arendelle wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but he had hung his hopes on at least warning her of Caleb's plans to make a show of force.

He spent most of those six hours standing on tiptoe in a corner, peering through the only window the bare cell afforded, trying to absorb just a little more sunlight before he died. There hadn't been sunlight in the Southern Isles in months, not really. By pure numbers even a harsh winter in the South was probably nothing in the North, and Hans was physically colder in this cell than he'd been in his stable back home. But this winter had not overpowered the people of Arendelle as it had in his country. To them it was just another season. There was a naturalness to what little he saw through this unglazed window, a cheeriness. There were sounds of life and activity, smells of food and resinous burning woods, the sun was clear and fine. Hans felt almost as if he were on holiday.

Yes, there were worse places to die.

Hans sensed her coming a few hours past sunset. First there was a bustle of guards, protests from some advisor silenced with a single word in that painfully familiar voice. He felt the temperature in his cell drop several degrees, saw his breath steam in the air, smelled snow, and then she was there, dismissing her escorts.

"But your Majesty— " her advisor tried once more.

"Thank you, Kai," she said firmly. "That will be all." She did not have to add, _What can he possibly do to me now?_ Hans heard it loud and clear.

He dropped to his knees facing her, eyes respectfully downcast, and listened to her breathing, and waited to be addressed. When she finally spoke (one hundred and seventeen breaths, that was how many it took her to master herself) her voice was quiet and even and deadly.

"Why have you broken exile?"

Hans said, as he'd rehearsed so many times in his mind, "I have come to ask Your Majesty to lift the curse on the Southern Isles. In exchange for the ending of the winter, I offer you my life."

Sixteen breaths followed. Then, "You come alone, without guards or messengers or so much as a note from the King of the Southern Isles. Did not His Majesty fear his oblate would simply disappear into the world and live free?"

"My father is too ill to know what goes on outside his sick chamber. My brother, who has the ruling of the Southern Isles while my father convalesces, does not know I am here," said Hans. He still had not looked on her face, though he was becoming quite intimately familiar with the hem of her gown. It was steely grey, slightly metallic, like the plating on a warship.

After another twenty-eight breaths, Elsa said in a voice of silky disbelief, "Then why have you come, if you were not sent?"

Hans counted his own breaths. It only took him ten to say, "I am here to grovel on my knees, your Majesty, and to offer you my life. Lift the curse. Kill me instead, but please, _please_ , lift the curse from my people. They will not last much longer; my evil was not their doing. They should not bear the punishment for it." The words came out broken and ugly.

Thirty-one. "It is an attractive offer," she said, in a voice that was suddenly not quite her own. Hans raised his head, not to her face but to her waist, which was about on eye-level anyway. With a sudden movement she plucked a shard of ice from thin air and held it in her ungloved hand.

"I kill you, my wrath is satisfied, I lift the curse and your kingdom is saved," she said. She ran the tip of the shard down his cheek. It was so sharp that he barely felt it but, a moment later, several drops of warm blood welled up where it had cut him. A few wisps of shorn beard sprinkled to the stone floor.

"And why should I not think this more trickery on your part?" she said. "Perhaps you wish to incite war. I'll not have my kingdom bound up in a blood feud."

"It is a war I am here to avert," said Hans. He began to talk quickly, to get every word out exactly as he had recited it. "My brother Caleb has long viewed Arendelle as a potential territory of the Southern Isles, an outpost for his navy in the North, that he might have dominion over the Skalding Sea. This has always been a fever dream of his, ever since the death of the King of Arendelle sent your navy into decline. It is only recently, with our father ailing and your winter inciting anti-Arendelle sentiment among his supporters, that Caleb's dream begins to seem possible. Unchecked, he will attempt invasion and redress. Every day that the winter persists, his power grows."

"Power?" Elsa scoffed. "You come to warn me of _your brother's_ lust for power? Thank you, scum, for giving me a laugh today."

"It is true," Hans said, trying to speak past the shame that ebbed and flowed through him, relentless as the tides. "If you would lift the winter before more harm is done, Majesty, what support my brother has for military action would almost certainly falter. While the Isles remain iced over, more and more in my father's cabinet turn desperate. The people of the Isles know only fishing, trade and naval combat. Prevented by your winter from the first two, what is left but the third?"

"How exceedingly good of you to come warn me of this," said the Queen. "And I will of course take you entirely at your word; there is certainly no chance that the royal family of the Southern Isles will take exception to my killing one of their own."

"I am no longer one of their own," corrected Hans. "There is no natural affection between my brothers and me, and I was stripped of first-class citizenship after the— _my_ attempted assassination of the Princess. My brother has always had his eye on Arendelle, and might indeed seek to politicize my death; but without the winter, there will be no one to support him. If you will satisfy yourself with my death and lift the curse from my kingdom, war can perhaps be averted."

"The idea has merit," she said thoughtfully. "I do not deny that I have many times imagined gutting you. Tell me, do you think I won't do it?"

"I'm praying you will," said Hans. "Please, your Majesty, torture me, kill me, do as you like with me, only _spare my people_. If not for them, then for Arendelle. Even hampered by ice and famine, my brother's navy is a force to be reckoned with. I am afraid of what he might do if this winter is prolonged. He is on a hair-trigger as it is."

"Why should I do anything you ask?" She pressed the blade against his throat. "Am I your servant, to take orders from you?" Her voice, so silky-smooth up till now, grew shrill.

"No, Your Majesty! Forgive me, I didn't mean—"

" _Forgive_ you? There will be no forgiving you, Hans! My sister, you miserable maggot, she's my _sister!_ You deserve no forgiveness, no mercy— you deserve—"

"Then give me what I deserve!" he begged, near tears now, "only let my people live, _please!_ They're _dying,_ Elsa!"

One breath later, she was screaming at him never to address her by that name again. One breath later, she was summoning a storm of hailstones to batter him black and blue. One breath later, she was turning on her heel and sweeping from the cell, the door clanging shut behind her.

* * *

Hans barely noticed the passing of time, or his surroundings, so enmeshed was he in his own sense of dread.

 _She will not do it_ , he thought. _She will not lift the curse. She will punish them all, and Caleb will garner what remaining support he needs. Thousands will die or more, it will be a war no one can win, and no one but yourself to blame_.

Or he might think, _If there is still a kernel of the old Elsa, the Elsa who had such love in her heart for a sister she barely knew, she will not let this happen. She will lift the curse, if only for Anna's sake. If there is any of that Elsa left...if you did not damage her beyond repair…_

And back and forth his thoughts would swing. The only thought that did not change was his conviction that it was all his fault.

On the third day, the Queen reappeared in Hans's cell.

"What happened to the provisions I sent to Kongenhaavn?" she demanded.

"What provisions, Your Majesty?"

"I sent a ship," said Elsa sternly, as if Hans was personally responsible for the unaccounted-for vessel. "She carried rations, such as we could spare. She has returned, empty, reporting her cargo duly remanded to your royal warehouses." She hesitated a moment. "It was not much. We had an excess of lutefisk, and the reindeer herds gave bountifully of their milk and meat and hides this year. We sent what we could, to the Southern Isles and to every other country that applied to us for aid."

Hans could not respond for several moments; he could barely even think.

Why would the Queen offer relief for a curse of her own sending? Of course she could be lying about the provisions. Caleb claimed she had not sent any; Elsa claimed she had.

Hans knew without having to think which of the two he believed.

"Setting aside for a moment the question of provisions," the Queen said, visibly annoyed at Hans's long silence, "why have you come here?"

Hans blinked four times in succession. He thought he'd made it clear. She'd given every indication of understanding when she whipped a knife out of nothingness and held it to his throat.

"I came to exchange my life for the lives of my countrymen," he finally said. "There was a belief, especially when provisions from Arendelle arrived in every port but ours, that the winter must be...must be..."

"Must be my doing?" She sounded furious again. "I didn't realize that was what you were dancing around the other day. And when I did realize it, I couldn't believe it. You think I cursed a whole country?"

Hans hung his head still lower. Now he could only see the bottom six inches of her skirt and the toes of two gleaming white boots. "No sane person would blame you if you did, Your Majesty."

"Well, I _didn't_ ," she snapped, and the skirt twirled and swept toward the cell door.

"I know," he said, so quietly he didn't think she heard, and perhaps she didn't, though the boots faltered just a fraction of a step before clicking away down the hall.

* * *

Whatever else she might be, Queen Elsa was not the villain here. He had not the guilt of that on his conscience, whatever else he might be responsible for.

The dread, of course, was for what would happen next. He might believe her when she said she'd not sent the curse, but the starving people of the Southern Isles certainly wouldn't. If Elsa had not cursed the Southern Isles she could not very well uncurse them. Caleb's campaign would continue to grow. By the time their father had recovered enough to resume the throne, enough of his cabinet might support retaliation that he would have no choice but to acquiesce.

Any invasion attempt would be doomed to fail. Hans knew, as so few did, the true extent of Elsa's power. But before his inevitable defeat, Caleb would drag the Southern Isles and Arendelle and who knew what other hapless countries into a new era of bloodshed and hardship.

So much for what might happen back in Kongenhaavn; what might Elsa do?

She might still decide to kill Hans. Caleb might be so relieved to have that burden outsourced that he went no further with his plans. This, Hans decided, would be the best possible outcome for everyone, and also the most fantastically unlikely. As much as Caleb wanted Hans dead, he wanted Arendelle more. He'd be more likely to use Hans's death as a bogus excuse to attack. Had not Queen Elsa herself suspected it?

Instead of executing him she might release him to Caleb, who would kill him as soon as their father was dead. For some reason this possibility bothered Hans more than any others. He wanted his death to _mean_ something, which was stupid, he knew. Why _should_ his death mean something when his life did not? Still, he hoped he would die not by Caleb's hand but by Elsa's. It was only fair.

Then again, she might just let him languish in this cell till he died of old age. That possibility was not without its attractions, Hans reflected as he stared out at the portion of bay visible from the window of his cell. Nothing could hurt him in here; he could hurt nothing.

Barring some unexpected natural intervention, such as a sudden warm spring in the Southern Isles or a lucky plague that carried off Caleb and his creeping son, these were the futures that Hans foresaw. They occupied his mind morning, noon and night. The anxiety they produced turned his gut to churning so that it was no difficulty to push away the bowls of gruel the guard shoved into his cell every day.

His only source of comfort was in knowing that the Queen had not cursed his country. How much simpler if she had! But the old Elsa, the one who would rather exile herself than risk hurting a lot of citizens who had just turned on her, lived still. He could not have said why exactly he was so certain she was telling the truth; lord knew his judgment in nearly all other things was laughably fallible. But his belief in her innocence was as unwavering as his belief in his own guilt.

* * *

 **A/N:** I wrote this like three years ago and it's still sort of not finished. Hopefully beginning posting will light the requisite fire under my ass.


	2. Family Reunion

Hans's cell was about the size of a large closet, lit by one narrow window that looked from ground-level onto a busy courtyard. It was kept tolerably warm by a brazier kept burning outside the iron-barred door. Its only furnishings were a stumpy three-legged stool and a wooden cot covered with several reindeer skins which smelled abominable but were surprisingly cozy. There were also three blankets woven of what felt and looked like yak hair. He kept at least one of these wrapped around him at all times because he found their horsey rankness comforting.

Beside the door was a bucket the guard filled with clean water every morning. The guard also brought steaming gruel, or black bread with fish, twice per day. Hans ate enough of the gruel and bread to keep body and soul together, but no more; in the event that Queen Elsa _did_ decide to execute him, he would not shame himself by voiding his bowels in front of her.

In a corner of the cell was a small hole which drained out through the thick stone walls. In the other corner Hans found a heap of stones in varying shapes and sizes, which had been used to block up a hole in the wall where a family of rodents had made their nest. The rodents were nothing but skeletons now, picked clean by carrion beetles that had since moved on. Other than this, the cell was more or less clean, warm and comfortable.

Hans marked the days on the wall with a bit of broken-off mortar, not from any desire to commemorate the passing of time but because he took comfort in tallying things and making them orderly. Even as a child he had never been able to walk up a flight of stairs or pass an array of soldiers without counting them off in his head. In this spirit he extracted the rat skeletons from their nest and carefully dismantled them, sorting the individual bones into neat rows. There were six skeletons in all; each had between two hundred twenty and two hundred twenty three discrete bones. In total Hans counted one thousand, three hundred and thirty-one bones. He counted them three times just to make sure, and then counted them seven more times to make it an even ten.

He tried using the rat bones to predict the future despite having no scrying abilities whatsoever. He did this by sorting the bones according to sharpness; if there were more sharp bones than blunt, he decided rather arbitrarily, it meant Elsa was going to kill him soon. If there were more blunt than sharp, it meant she was going to let him die here of old age. Eventually he gave this up, however, because it was an insufficiently complex model for all the possibilities available. The sharp versus blunt method of divination didn't even _account_ for what Caleb might be getting up to.

Hans found a number of other interesting objects in the rats' nest, obviously pilfered from the guards: a chewed scrap of playing card, a bit of embossed leather from an old gauntlet, assorted buttons. Oh, and a key.

Hans chucked the key out the window without even trying it.

* * *

Seven days later, Queen Elsa appeared again. It was early evening this time; the sun had set only a few hours ago, and lanterns had been lit all along the harbor. Through his window Hans could hear the sound of laughter, music and cheer. He smelled roasting meat and fatty fish and the good, nutty scent of chestnuts and cooking root vegetables. Then he smelled snow, not the natural variety but the heady vibrant snow smell that meant _her_. Hans fell to his knees and bowed his head and waited, as usual. Heart pounding, as usual. Counting breaths, as usual.

It was some time after entering his cell before she spoke— sixty seven breaths and at least two distinct huffs. Ample time to study the bottom half of her ensemble. He thought the fabric might actually be woven of ice, blue-green and crystalline and impossible. Evening attire for a Snow Queen.

"Why are you here?" she finally said.

"I came to offer my life in exchange for the lifting of the cursed winter in the Southern Isles," he answered promptly.

"The winter you don't believe I sent," she said in a curious monotone. "That makes no sense."

"I didn't know for sure you hadn't sent it," he told her glittering, pointed shoe. "My brother Caleb does, or says he does. I thought— I hoped he was wrong. But I knew it was a possibility."

The pointed shoe withdrew under the hem of her skirt, which threw off strange lights in the darkness of the cell. "You realize I might still decide to kill you. Just because I am unwilling to freeze thousands of innocent foreigners does not by any means indicate an unwillingness to turn the blood to ice in your veins and watch you die right now."

"Yes, Your Majesty," he said. "I considered that also."

"And tell me, since you've apparently considered this thing from every angle, why do you think I won't do it?" An ice-shard, more elaborate than the first she'd conjured, appeared in his field of vision and dragged itself from one side of his neck to the other.

"I don't think you won't do it, Your Majesty," he said, trying not to cringe away from the razor-sharp blade that was now floating in midair mere millimeters from his right ear. Elsa plucked the blade deftly from the air and pressed it under his chin, forcing him to raise his face to hers. Doggedly, he did not look at her.

"Then what's your exit strategy?" she demanded.

Hans was silent.

"Why are you here? What happened to the provisions I sent? Why did you break exile, and why did you do it alone? Why was no warning sent to prepare me? Why have all my letters to the Southern Isles gone unanswered? What are you _playing_ at?"

"Whether my brother believes you sent the winter or not," he said, "he's been quietly readying the Navy— for what, I do not properly know. Lars— different brother, the only one who'll still talk to me— believes Caleb intends to sail here and request reparations for the curse he keeps saying you sent. I believe Caleb intends to invade, and take his reparations by force. Either way, Caleb has designs on your country."

"That doesn't answer my question. Why are you here? To threaten me?" The knife twitched.

"No, Your Majesty," Hans gasped as the knife slipped under a few layers of epidermis. "To alert you. That's all."

"And to sacrifice yourself _so_ _very nobly_ for your countrymen, of course," she said acidly.

"You misunderstand, Majesty. I harbor no illusions about my own nobility. Caleb will have me killed as soon as our father dies anyway. I've known it for years. And I— I wanted my death to _mean_ something. Like— "

"Like what?"

"Like your sister, what she did for you." The words came out whisper-soft and shameful. "I thought, if there was the slightest chance it could bring an end to the winter… And even if it couldn't, because you didn't send the winter, because _of course_ you didn't send the winter, I thought at least you'd have been warned, you would know what was coming, and when you kill me it will still be better than just waiting for one of Caleb's goons to stab me in my sleep."

"You could have run away. Why are you in such a hurry to _die?"_ He finally looked up at her face, which was more exasperated than actually enraged.

"Why do you think?" he said simply.

Elsa's eyes narrowed and her lips pursed down into nothing. She dropped the knife, which shattered into snowflakes and blew away before it hit the floor.

"Oh no," she said, shaking her head slowly, backing toward the door. "Ohh, no you don't. You're not going to manipulate me that easily."

"Your Majesty— "

"I don't know what you're after, slime, but believe me, I _will_ find out." She swished away and he was alone.

* * *

Over the next several days Hans reassembled three of the six rat skeletons using gruel as glue for the joints. He was no hand at rat anatomy and ended up with a few hundred extra bones that he couldn't figure out what to do with. He wasn't going for realism, anyway. He used extra rib bones to make one rat a pair of wings. He gave another a set of spines that ran from the tip of its nose to the base of its tail.

He missed his horses.

Five days later, Elsa came to visit again, this time in the morning. The cell window faced south and the best light came in the mornings. The sun was barely beginning to rise when she appeared. The reddish glow coming in through the window danced off her bluish-white gown and her silver-white hair and her pearl-white skin.

"My guards tell me you're not eating," she said. "Tell me why."

Hans, kneeling before her, nudged the gruel-soaked rat family further out of sight with the toe of his boot. "I eat," he said. "The guards give me too much, that is all. It is more than I need."

"Garbage," said Elsa. "You know what I think? You're trying to starve yourself so that when you're returned to your brothers they'll think I treated you inhumanely, thus provoking an international incident." Folded together in front of him, his hands curled into fists. "A mistake on two counts," she went on, not noticing. "First, you shouldn't assume you'll ever be returned to them. And second, I have no intention of allowing you to starve."

"I don't want— " he began.

"Be silent," she snapped. "Do not mistake me, scum. Nothing could give me greater pleasure than to watch you waste away. I am not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. You are my prisoner and I will not have you die under my roof. _Eat_."

And to Hans's astonishment she twisted a bowl of porridge out of thin air.

What astonished him was not that she had conjured something; he'd seen her do that before. It was not even that she'd conjured food.

No, it was that the food she conjured was _hot_. Hans could see lazy whorls of steam rising slowly from it. He smelled cinnamon.

"I thought you only did ice," he said in awe, unconsciously inclining his face toward the heat thrown off by the bowl.

"I brought life to an entire country," she said contemptuously. "I brought a whole summer's harvest from the earth in the span of a single morning, or had you forgotten what happened the day you tried to murder my entire family?"

"I didn't forget," he said quietly, turning his face away.

"Ice is easier," she went on, "but I can do warm things if I concentrate, and if I'm in the right mood. And right now I'm in the mood for you to eat this entire bowl so I can go have my own breakfast and try to forget the nuisance I have festering down here in my dungeon."

Still Hans hesitated. It was looking more and more like she wasn't going to kill him, but she could always change her mind, and if she did he really didn't want to get digested porridge all over her shoes. But she'd inconvenienced herself to come all the way down here, before she had her own breakfast, no less, and he was keeping her waiting.

"For heaven's sake, it's not poisoned," she huffed.

"I never thought it was," he said, and took the porridge with shaking hands. It was just thin enough to drink straight from the bowl, and once he started he didn't stop till he'd drunk it all. It was the most delicious thing he'd ever tasted, spicy and creamy and buttery-rich, a culinary miracle.

"From now on you will eat every bite that my guards give you," she said, taking the empty bowl from him and collapsing it into nothing. "Don't make me come down here again."

* * *

The porridge Elsa had conjured lingered at the corners of his mind most of the time when he was awake and all the time he slept. He wondered if it had been enchanted in some way (" _Well, obviously, but_ _besides_ _that…"_ ) and if he was going mad, or if it was simply that he'd not had good food in so long that anything with a savor to it was bound to stick in his memory.

He dutifully ate the bread and salted fish, and the lukewarm gruel the guards pushed through the bars of his cell. It wasn't terrible for prison food; Hans gathered it was just the leftovers from the guards' own meals, although they added spices and flavorings to their own portions. Elsa had asked that he eat, so he ate. Even though he didn't want to.

Weeks passed, and nothing changed. Hans lived for the little vignettes of life he spotted through his window: tiny dramas of business and family and society. He counted the ships down in the harbor and identified their types, estimating the number of men needed to crew each one, guessing at their business.

He was, of course, always bored. But boredom was preferable to what was coming.

One day while gazing out the window— absentmindedly, for once forgetting to be miserable— he saw a familiar shape that recalled his thoughts in a hurry, sent his heart plummeting into his stomach.

The _Wind's Mistress_ , the flagship of the Southern Isles' navy, the seat of the first-in-command. Hans knew at once who captained it. The _Wind's Mistress_ sailed under black sheets blazoned with the royal crest, which was done under only one circumstance:

The King of the Southern Isles had died. Long live the King.

* * *

The nightmares had started years ago. Now, they came in daylight, too.

Arendelle, brought to its knees by the naval prowess of the Southern Isles; the Southern Isles, brought to its knees by Queen Elsa's magic.

Lars, the only brother who had ever loved or liked or even known him, saying gravely to Hans, "They think you should be killed, but I disagree. I think you should live." A sentence crueller than the neat oblivion of execution.

Princess Anna, icy-blue and cold beneath his uplifted sword, but this time it was she who shattered instead of his blade, shattered into a hundred thousand pieces which reverted to pink flesh and gore, re-freezing on the frozen harbor and his white coat and his face.

Queen Elsa, running across that same harbor, which melted underneath her and swallowed her whole.

Queen Elsa, shot by a bolt from one of Weselton's men, which Hans could not divert in time.

Queen Elsa, executed by her subjects, Hans ruling Arendelle in her place, beloved by her people.

* * *

The worst was the last: Caleb's voice, furtive and excited, and coming closer all the time. This was inevitably the most formless of Hans's nightmares, and yet the one which conveyed the most menace. Often, a dream of Caleb's voice was disquieting enough to wake Hans.

This time, what woke him was Caleb's boot nudging his temple. Hans jerked upright, slamming his head against the stone wall behind him in his hurry to put a few more inches between himself and his brother.

"That was easier than I expected," said Caleb conversationally, towering in the closeness of the prison cell. Three shadows hulked in the darkness behind him; though Hans could not make out faces, he guessed from their bulk that two of them were Runo and Rudi. "Castle security is shit here, did you know that, little brother? They'll let just anyone in."

"They let _you_ in!" quipped the third shadow, and Hans's heart sank. Caleb had brought his son. Pieter was as witless as he was cruel, as spoiled as vindictive, and if he was here to egg his father on, there was an excellent chance that Hans would not live to see another sunrise.

"Look at you, you're as helpless as a baby," said Caleb softly, caressing his youngest brother's face almost tenderly. "What has Mad Queen Elsa done to you? Look, son. She has treated him abominably. Has him sleeping on rags like a serf, and him a former Prince. Is it not shameful?"

"But Father," said Pieter, "you said— "

"Piet, it's truly criminal what the Queen has done to my brother," Caleb went on, this time layering his voice more bluntly with meaning. Pieter still did not comprehend, though Hans did. The twins certainly knew what to do, hauling Hans upright so he was face-to-face with Caleb. One of them gagged him with a length of musty rope, knotted in his mouth so he couldn't make a sound.

And Hans knew that he was about to die, _finally_.

"Quick, son," said Caleb, "help me tend to his _wounds_." With this, he drove his elbow into Hans's thin abdomen. Crowing with delight, Pieter finally understood what had been clear to Hans since the black flag of the Southern Isles appeared on the horizon:

They had come to start a war, and Hans would help them do it.

He gnawed and drooled around his gag, but it was tied too tightly for him to make a sound. It probably made no difference, anyway; no doubt the guards had been bribed or drugged or otherwise tricked into abandoning their duties.

Runo, the stronger twin, folded Hans's arms behind his back til they almost dislocated. Rudi rained blows upon his face, his stomach, his sides. Then Caleb, ever the sophisticated one, took out a needle-thin boning knife and used it to open long shallow cuts in Hans's sides and torso. So sharp was the blade that at first Hans barely felt it; then he felt the blood soaking his rough linen shirt, warm at first but quickly cooling. A distant part of his mind wondered which knife Caleb was using this time. Caleb had names for all his knives.

But it was Pieter with the true flair for torment. While Runo and Rudi busied themselves with brute force and Caleb carved with artistic delicacy, Pieter stood quietly watching, a smile of childlike pleasure on his lips.

When Pieter finally moved he moved suddenly, darting to the corner. He dug into Hans's unemptied waste-bucket and lifted out a festering handful. "Hold his head still," he commanded, "and remove his gag."

wearing a look of youthful glee Pieter smeared fermenting shit in his mouth. Hans struggled to turn away, but Runo had an iron grip on his overlong hair. Pieter pushed his handful into Hans's mouth, down his throat— he gagged, and vomited up tarry shit and bile, and it was forced down again and again until his stomach spasmed and clenched. Then Pieter went back for another handful and rubbed it mercilessly into Hans's brutalized eyes and nose. He was blinded, sickened, helplessly heaving.

"I want to play Kindling," he heard Pieter say with breathless eagerness. Caleb began to chuckle.

"You heard the boy," he said. "Hold his legs, Rudi; I'll take his arms." Hans had no idea what Kindling was, but he felt a sudden terror that even Caleb's knife had been unable to produce. His inability to see what Pieter was doing deepened his fear.

He felt himself lowered to the floor, held immobile by Runo and Rudi's strong arms, his right leg lifted several inches off the floor. And Pieter began to sing:

 _No wood on the hearth, no wood on the rick;_

 _If we don't have more kindling we'll freeze in our tracks._

 _I must go to the forest and find a stout stick_

 _and stomp it and stomp it and stomp till it_ _cracks_ _!_

Blinded as he was Hans did not see who did the actual stomping— Runo, probably, the heaviest of the three.

But oh gods, he felt it.

The hard-soled boot descended on his elevated leg with hundreds of pounds of pressure. He felt his knee bend the wrong way and then shatter. The roar coming from his mouth was unending and inhuman and his leg was raised higher and _the stomping went on_ , his leg wasn't a leg anymore, it was a branch in the forest being broken up for kindling…

...broken, broken, wasn't it broken enough, _wasn't he broken enough?_

The stomping went on, and the singing went on, and Hans screamed until his throat bled and choked him silent and his shit-smeared eyes saw white. He would lose consciousness soon, and they would kill him, they would kill him, only _please god let them do it soon_ —

And suddenly it stopped, the singing and the stomping, and through the pain he was vaguely aware of being unhanded. He felt the earth fall away from him, felt his mind fall away from him...

Blind white closed in around him, blanketing the howling madness in his mind with blessed quiet; and in that silence, one sound arose, startlingly close, both gentle and hard, a blizzard of comfort, an agony of relief.

 _Her_.

He could not make out her words or their meaning. He did not know why she had come, or if she had come, or if her voice was simply the last thing his brain had conjured for him before he died. One thing, and one thing only, was certain. In the seconds before the last shred of him departed, Hans knew that he would love her for every remaining second of his worthless life.

* * *

 **A/N:** I'm tired! The week has been hard! Leave me a review so I will feel happy!


	3. A Place On No Map

Hans lived, or did not live, and was not sure which, or why, or for how long.

Sometimes her voice was there, and he came back to himself a little bit. Sometimes her voice was absent, and so was he.

At all times the pain persisted.

At first he floated on a cloud of pain that was abstract and hazy and bluntly terrifying for how little it seemed connected to anything resembling a body. There were a certain number of winged rodents floating with him, and sometimes they menaced him and sometimes they comforted him, though mostly they ignored him.

After that (how long after? Hans did not know) the cloud solidified. Now he _knew_ he had a body, because every inch of it hurt. He lay there sometimes and listened to his joints creaking against each other like icebergs in the Skalding Sea. He was never anything but too hot and too cold simultaneously, freezing in his own sweat, and everything smelled like fermented shit and vomit. He had no control at all over any of his body parts: he could not open his eyes or make a fist or choose when to urinate or control the spasms that sometimes rippled through his wasted abdomen.

Later, the pain would recede from his arms and his head and eventually, from his stomach and his left leg. His right leg he knew to be gone, probably amputated somewhere well above the knee, which meant he would suffer from phantom pain for the rest of his life. He had known many sailors and fighting men who had lost arms and legs to cannons, swords and gangrene, and they always said that the ghost of the missing limb haunted them day and night, to punish them for their carelessness in losing it. Now Hans knew what they meant. The fading of the pain in the rest of his body only gave him more time to focus on his phantom leg.

It was a while before anything of substance could penetrate his consciousness, and when something finally did, it was her. Even delirious he was always aware in a disembodied sort of way whether she was near, and speaking, or not. But as his mind came back to him he began to be able to hold her voice in his head for short stretches of time and distill meaning from her words. Sometimes he was even able to remember.

"Maybe he needs a warm hug, Elsa," said a queer little voice with a laugh caught in its throat.

"I'm not giving him a hug, Olaf," said Elsa. At the sound of her voice, Hans felt the pain relax ever so slightly.

"Look, he smiled," said the little voice— Olaf?

"That's a grimace," said Elsa, and a little of Hans's headache receded.

" _That's_ a smile," said Olaf pointedly. There was a pause of such downy comforting silence that Hans almost went to sleep again.

"Well," said Elsa at last, "he's probably dreaming of murdering me in cold blood, or leaving Anna to freeze to death."

"Huh," said Olaf blandly. "It's gone. You melted it."

"You can't melt a smile, Olaf."

" _You_ can."

There was a third voice also, elderly and gruff and competent. He sometimes heard it say coaxing words he knew it didn't mean, usually accompanied by spoonfuls of warm unappetizing broth which Hans rarely attempted to swallow. The voice was like a brick wall, he thought in the darkness of his mind. It didn't wish him harm but it didn't wish him well, either.

"He doesn't keep his food down," said the brick voice. "He's barely getting enough to keep body and soul together as it is. I'm sorry, Your Majesty. I don't know how to force it."

"He's just being stubborn," said Elsa. "Give me that." Her voice came closer. "Listen to me, Hans, you thrice-damned ingrate. You saved my life from Weselton, _once_ , and you tried to kill me, _once_ , which makes us even. You almost killed my sister, but then again I almost killed your brother in that cell back there, which, I suppose, makes us once more even."

"Look, you made him smile again," whispered Olaf excitedly.

"However," Elsa went on, "I also saved your life from said brother, which, if you've been following along, puts you _totally_ and _completely_ in my debt, which means you have to do what I say, which means _open your mouth and swallow what I put in it_."

Hans's mouth fell open, although that might as easily have been from shock as anything, and a spoonful of hot broth poured in, seasoned with herbs he knew for sure had not been there when the brick-voiced woman fed him.

"There," said Elsa. "Now another."

She fed him the whole bowl like that, and he kept every bite of it down.

* * *

Hans became slowly aware of the passage of time as a linear concept rather than an abstract one. There were periods when light filtered through his closed eyelids and he knew it was day. Sometimes the light was less, and he knew it was evening or early morning, and that a fire had been lit for the benefit of his brick-voiced caretaker. Sometimes it was completely dark and he heard brick-voiced snores blending uneasily with the pleasant crackle of hearthfire.

The brick voice, which he learned belonged to a woman named Urgma, was always there, but altogether he heard it say very little. Most of Urgma's vocalisations were complaints at her patient's intransigence when she thought he was asleep.

Elsa visited about once every two or three days, according to Hans's highly fallible sense of time. Often she brought that cheeky little manservant Olaf with her. The sound of Olaf's strange hiccuping laughter always preceded them, and Hans found himself straining to hear it whenever he was awake.

He was too weak to open his mouth for any purpose more sophisticated than the swallowing of broth. He wanted to speak to her, to thank her, to apologize, to say _something_ , but his lips and tongue would not obey. He imagined what he would say to her if he had the strength, held entire conversations with her in his head, none of them comforting. Often these imagined conversations carried on even after he fell asleep, which he did often. In fact Hans slept most of the time.

Eventually Hans became aware of a fourth presence. It took him a long time to notice, because the fourth moved little and spoke not at all.

For a while, he thought it was just a very comfortable, very heavy blanket.

But as his phantom leg began to itch, and itch, and _itch_ , he naturally began to fidget, and suddenly his blanket was alive and emitting a sound somewhere in between a cat's snarling and a reindeer grunting and a polar bear rolling its eyes.

Whatever it was, it surprised him so much that Hans opened _his_ eyes.

And screamed.

The snarling-grunting-blanket thing screamed right back. Something was wrong with Hans's vision, but he could see the thing at the end of his bed plainly enough. It had a mouth lined with eight-inch needle-sharp icicles, and four sharp-clawed bearlike paws big enough to paddle a warship into harbor, and a face that was somewhere between a wolf and an eagle, and pointed ears like a lynx, and stumpy little antlers like a yearling buck, and more icicles in a line down its spine, and another big one at the terminus of its tail, and it was the size of a horse or a bear or several wolves roped together, and _oh god it was going to eat him_ —

The blanket monster settled back down on the lower half of Hans's bed and began nonchalantly licking its forepaw, which was made of snow, with a tongue that was made of snow, while regarding him warily through eyes that were made of green sea-ice.

"Blghhmghuh." Hans said. The creature stopped licking just long enough to shoot him a look of pure disdain. Hans rearranged his tongue and took his time and tried again.

"Hmmghrl."

Much closer.

"Whaaattttt," he managed finally.

The thing shifted very delicately and began work on its other paw. It was heavy, not like a flesh-and-blood animal of similar size would have been, but heavy like a snowfall, which Hans realized was more or less what it was. Hans could barely move beneath it. He tried to extract himself from under its bulk and it suddenly stopped licking itself and made the noise again and _glared_ at him, and Hans could swear it had Elsa's eyes.

 _You're her sentry_ he thought. But that didn't seem entirely right. The way the creature observed him and responded to his movements seemed less like a warden and more like a guardian. Almost protective.

He stared at the blanket thing covering his phantom leg, put a great deal of effort into shifting it, and watched dumbfounded as the creature bared its teeth and made the noise again. Hans finally understood. It was sitting on him to keep him from moving his phantom limb around because it was not a phantom limb at all, it was a very real limb in a very real cast and he had to be very careful not to mess it up while it set.

She had saved his life, saved his leg, and left a sentient snow mountain to keep him from coming to harm.

* * *

Hans could not sit up or even keep his eyes open for very long at a time, and the difference between wakefulness and sleep was probably not apparent to anyone but him, and even then only sometimes. But he began to be conscious more and more.

The blanket creature never left his legs. The first sign that Hans was regaining fine motor skills was when he finally managed to reach out and tentatively touch the creature's paw. It didn't immediately recoil or leap for his throat and so Hans patted it experimentally. It was cold and granulated like snow, but it didn't melt in the warmth from his touch. The surface remained fluffy like the top layer of a deep snowfall; it didn't pack down no matter how hard Hans pressed it, but always sprang back into a cloud-like airiness. Something about it was almost like fur.

The creature let out a buzzing rumble and nudged Hans with its beaky nose thing. Some form of muscle memory jolted to life in his clumsy hand and he found himself stroking its muzzle just as he used to stroke Sitron.

The rumbling intensified. The creature settled its paw on Hans's stomach, and its beak on its paw, and let him pet it as if they were old friends. Bafflingly, the creature could no more impart its cold to him than he could melt its coat. His fingers were no more frostbitten after fifteen minutes of solid neck-scratchies than when first he reached out to the creature.

Hans fell asleep like that too many times to count.

His vision remained wonky even after he learned to keep his eyes open for more than a minute at a go, and he finally realized why: he was blind in his left eye. He had no depth perception any more. The eye didn't hurt, and when he cautiously felt the area with his fingertips it seemed physically uninjured, not crusted over or scarred or otherwise wounded. The lid could still open and close in perfect unison with its mate. He just couldn't see out of it. He guessed that fever and infection had combined to take his sight from him. He was lucky to see at all, and knew it.

With increased awareness came increased awareness of _her_. She most often visited at night; he guessed it was because only then could she be spared from her other political duties. He didn't know why she continued to check in on him personally when she could have sent someone; he wondered if anyone else even knew he was here.

Usually he was asleep when she arrived, and her voice woke him. He never responded, at first because he was too weak, later because she didn't seem to require or even want a response. She never lit a lamp, so even when Hans _could_ keep his eyes open he couldn't see her as anything more than a bluish-grey blur. Since he couldn't see her it was a fair guess that she couldn't see him, which pleased Hans more than he wanted to admit. As long as she was just a voice in the darkness, he could almost forget enough to feel comforted by her nearness.

"Anna told me what you said about your brothers," she said one night, "that they ignored you for three years and pretended you didn't exist. I thought, sure, I can see that. My own mother barely came to visit me. It was always Father. Everything— it was always Father. He taught me all I know, or nearly. He was so educated, so clever. Such an absolutely fascinating man. And I'll never know half of what was stored away in his brilliant mind, because he's dead and gone."

She was silent for a little while. So was Hans, absently scritching under the blanket thing's chin.

"Anna never ignored me," she went on. "She was always trying to get me to come out of my room but I...I couldn't. Obviously. At first it was because Father had forbidden it. He didn't lock the door; he didn't have to. I was such an obedient child. Even my thoughts were obedient. I did and said and thought everything he wanted me to, or at least I _tried_ , and now I don't even know why. What was it all for? To protect Anna, to protect Anna— why did he never want to protect _me?_ "

Hans wished he could answer her. _Scritch scritch scritch._

"The worst part is, I could have been learning so much. Not the things Father taught me, but things I could have discovered on my own, if I'd spent half as much energy practicing with my powers as I did wishing them away. I've been using them deliberately for two years now and I've already come so far."

This was true. She could create food, shelter, and a dazzlingly varied wardrobe out of thin air. Not to mention living flora and fauna. The blanket thing nuzzled against Hans's hand. _Scritch scritch_.

"Imagine if I'd been learning to use them all along. The catastrophe at my coronation, the winter, _all_ of it— it could have been avoided. I could have been with Anna, we would have had each other and she wouldn't have thought she needed _you_."

The scritching stopped.

"And now I've got the new King of the Southern Isles moments away from declaring war against Arendelle, and as much as I want to just chuck you out into a snowbank and see how long you last, now I've saved your life and you're a political prisoner and somehow it's become my life's work to keep you alive." Hans could tell from the rustling of her gown and the minute eddy she stirred in the air that she had risen to her feet.

"Oh, Hans," she sighed. "How I wish you'd never been born."

* * *

 **A/N** : That MAKES TWO OF YOU, ELSA. Thanks for the reviews guys they really brighten my day!


	4. Breathing In The Dark

"Anna and Kristoff are engaged, that should interest you," the Queen announced a few nights later. "Or should it? You never cared for her, as I recall, so perhaps it doesn't affect you one way or the other."

This was not strictly true. Hans had liked Anna very much, in rather the same way he liked Sitron (though Sitron had been a better listener). She had been so friendly, so open and without guile, and— best of all— she'd truly seemed to _like_ him. He didn't blame her and Elsa for assuming that every word out of his mouth had been a lie, but he'd never spoken a falsehood to her.

After all, he'd never _said_ he loved her. In his family, love was not a prerequisite for marriage anyway, so he hadn't even felt a twinge of conscience about it. Up until he became possessed of the insane desire to be King of Arendelle, he'd actually thought he was just going to come out of this with a new wife. All the better if she got him the hell out of the Southern Isles.

He still wasn't sure what had flipped the switch in his head from _Form A Politically Advantageous Union Somewhere Far From Kongenhaavn_ to _Leave Anna To Die, Murder The Queen Of Arendelle And Steal The Crown_. It didn't even make sense. Hans wasn't stupid, he _knew_ you couldn't marry into the throne. The whole plan had been so shoddy, and Hans was ordinarily an excellent planner; it was one of the few qualities he liked about himself. What had he been thinking?

"...that I don't like Kristoff, I _do_ ," Elsa was saying. Hans dragged himself back to the present. There would be plenty of time to reflect on his own shortcomings when Elsa left.

"He's very good-hearted and respectful and he really seems to _get_ her, y'know?"

Hans nodded, although in the darkness of course she couldn't see it.

"And okay, maybe he's not the best businessman in the world, but he won't have to be when he's a prince. He'll just have to be a good husband and, eventually, a good father. That's all. I'm sure he can do that. It's just… Where did he _come_ from? He was _raised by trolls_. I don't know if you realize this, but trolls are _not the good guys_. They may have had an understanding with my father, but he warned me very strictly to read triple meanings into everything they say. They don't even have to make deals; they can make you think they're your friends, that they love you, that they're loyal to you, and you'll do whatever they want asking nothing in return. Or they'll talk slyly to you and put ideas in your head, and you'll swear till the day you die it was your own idea and no one else's. A troll is first and forever a trickster, Father always told me." Her voice rose in pitch and volume, as Hans had noticed it almost always did when she referred to her father's teachings.

"With one hand he will give you the shirt off his back, and with the other he'll rob you of your firstborn, and what with one thing and another, by the end you never even notice the empty cradle. And he— Kristoff— he was _raised_ by them! Who are his parents? Do they even know they ever had a son, or did the trolls make them forget? And that, _that_ is not even what bothers me the most."

Hans waited patiently.

"Those things raised him from childhood, and they are tricksters, every one. So what does that make Kristoff? I've known him for two years now, but do I _truly_ know him? Does Anna? He was brought up by trolls. Is he one of them, or one of us?"

Her voice carried so much fear and anguish that for the first time since before the attack, Hans spoke aloud to her.

"You're afraid every man you meet will be like me," he said quietly.

There was a shriek of surprise, a crash, and the room flared into light.

"Hans!" yelped Elsa. "You're _awake?_ "

Hans flinched against the sudden illumination, which didn't seem to be coming from anywhere in particular.

"Of course I'm awake," he said, confused. "Did you think I wasn't?"

"But I was whispering!"

"Your voice carries."

Elsa shot Hans a malevolent glare. "Are you always awake?"

"Well, not always. Everyone's got to sleep _sometimes_ …"

"You know what I mean," she huffed. "Have you always been awake when I come to check in?"

"Well, yes," he said patiently. "I thought you knew that."

"You never said anything!"

"There was nothing to say. Can't you tell the difference between the way a man breathes in his sleep and the way he breathes when he's awake?"

"How would I know that? How do _you_ know that? Do I even want to know how you know that?"

"I was in the Navy for years," he pointed out. "It gets dark aboard a ship at night, so you learn to navigate by sound. I could diagnose a man's diphtheria in the dark. And have, more than once."

Elsa had begun to pace. Her fingers toyed with the end of her braid. She seemed to be in much greater distress than the situation warranted. Hans felt instantly guilty; had it been disingenuous of him to let her talk without alerting her that he was listening? He started to rub the blanket thing's ears, but the blanket thing shifted restlessly out of reach. It lay, heavy and inscrutable as ever on Hans's legs, and looked balefully from Elsa to Hans and back again.

"I'm sorry, Your Majesty," said Hans humbly, folding his hands together. "I didn't think— well, why would you talk to someone who couldn't hear you?"

"I don't know, Olaf told me to do it." She sounded suddenly embarrassed.

"Olaf? The giggly one?"

"He's my, um. He's our snowman. Anna's and mine." Her embarrassment, if anything, intensified. "We built him together when we were little girls, before everything went wrong. And when I froze Arendelle, I sort of rebuilt him, and he came to life, and he's very… Well, you'd have to meet him to understand. But he came with me when we were setting your leg, for moral support, and he noticed you seemed to, um, do better when I was talking to you. And since I have to check in on you anyway… You know what, look, can we _please_ stop talking about this?"

"Of course," said Hans. "You're the Queen."

"So, you can diagnose diphtheria in the dark, huh?" Elsa said in a transparent effort to change the subject. "Don't they have candles onboard a ship?"

"Well, yes, in the captain's cabin there's usually a lantern. But it's expensive to keep the ship lit all the time, and the risk of fire is too great. Besides, you can't see the stars to navigate unless your eyes are used to the dark."

* * *

"Hans? Hans, are you awake?"

"I'm awake, Your Majesty."

The sick-chamber filled dimly with light. Hans blinked sleepily. The blanket thing reached its neck out so Hans could give some attention, as he always did on waking. (The blanket thing, of course, pretended this was not what it was doing, it just felt like having a bit of a stretch was all.)

"You seem to be getting along rather well with your guard," said Elsa musingly, letting her own small fingers drift down the appreciative creature's spine. "I didn't make it to be your friend, you know."

"Well, we've got to pass the time somehow," said Hans, working the spot under its maw that he knew it particularly enjoyed. "I can never tell if Blank actually likes me or if it's just making the most of a bad situation."

"Blank?"

"Oh, um." Hans turned sheepish. "Short for Blanket Thing. That's just what I call it, you never told me its real name. I'll call it whatever you want, of course."

"Blank, hm?" The blanket thing— Blank— tilted its head at her and let out an assenting noise something like rocks being crushed together. "Blank'll do, I suppose," said Elsa. "I didn't name it before. I was in rather a rush when I made it, you know."

"When did you make it?"

Elsa swished her navy-blue skirt out of the way and perched on the edge of the bed, the better to dig her fingers into the soft fluff of snow that formed a kind of mane down Blank's shoulders.

"Blank happened when I saw your brothers...when I went down to the dungeon. And saw what was, um, going on." She shifted restlessly, avoiding Hans's eye. "I meant to make _something_ , but I really expected another Marshmallow, a sort of sentient snowpile. I can't usually create living things, you know. But I'm starting to understand how it works, sort of. How Marshmallow is different from Olaf is different from, er, Blank."

"That makes one of us, Your Majesty. I don't understand it at all."

Elsa picked aimlessly at her nails. "It was— the whole thing was overwhelming," she said after a hollow pause. "I was overwhelmed. Blank just kind of...happened."

Blank lifted its head and snorted. Hans stared at it, trying to puzzle out what it was made of, other than snow and ice. It was sly and dangerous and malleable like a cat, but it seemed loyal like a dog, preferring Hans's company over Urgma's, happier still when Elsa joined them. It was irritable, protective, attuned to Hans's every movement, quick and reactive like a bird of prey but also lazy, like a blanket. It was boneless, but when he dug his deeply fingers into its snowcoat Hans could feel shrapnel of ice chunks and even (he thought) a few rocks. Not organized like a skeleton, but scattered, like the ice one might pack into a snowball if one was in a particularly nasty mood.

Perhaps Hans should have dropped the subject as Elsa clearly wanted to do, but he was curious, and Blank's comforting nearness made him bold. "Blank's a far cry from Marshmallow," he pointed out. "It's got a personality. It's got _moods_."

"I never thought it could be like that," said Elsa, moving her hand restlessly down Blank's broad back. "I knew you had a lot of brothers and I knew you didn't get along, but I didn't understand at all. I would _never_ have...even if we'd held you here, even if we'd hanged you, we would never have done anything like…" She waved her arm vaguely at his prone form, and Hans understood: sheltered as she'd been, abandoned, neglected, she'd yet never seen brutality like his brothers embodied. Her life had been one of emotional cruelty, not physical. To see it so viciously manifested must have been shocking.

Blank rumbled so deeply Hans's back teeth ached, and a small avalanche rippled down its spine. It closed its teeth around his hand, hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to injure, a gesture he had over time come to interpret as a sign of tolerance and solidarity if not actually affection. Eyes watering from the cold sting of Blank's teeth, listening to Elsa's diminishing control over her words, Hans understood that her anger was not directed at him. This did not make it any less terrifying.

"Your own brothers! I nearly lost my breakfast. They nearly lost their _heads_. I thought you were dead, and there was the King of the Southern Isles, laughing like he was at a party while he filleted your torso, his son and heir singing and pissing on your face. And your leg wasn't a leg anymore, and you really seemed _very dead_ , and sure, I may have decided long ago that you can fall off a cliff for all I care but this was _different_. Your own family, and they were _laughing_. Even at our worst, Anna and I would have done anything for each other, because we're sisters and that's what sisters do.

"I saw what Caleb was carving into you, and I realized that you'd been trying to warn me of this all along, which meant that you knew _all along_ what kind of a man the new King of the Southern Isles is. I wanted to be sick, but instead of being sick I got angry, and that's when Blank happened. It just sort of came out of me. Even _I_ was afraid of it for a moment, but your brothers were more afraid, and they didn't try to stop it from picking you up and carrying you all the way up here. I had to stay, to call for my guards— your brothers drugged the ones who were on duty, so I had to wait for more to arrive, and then escort your brothers back to their ship. By the time I tracked Blank up here with Urgma and Olaf, I was sure I'd find you dead. When we found you it was lying over your body, it wouldn't let anyone but me near. It took an hour to convince it to let Urgma look at you, and for a week or more we still thought you'd die at any moment."

She stopped, having run out of breath, and folded her thin arms tightly across her chest and stared at the wall over Hans's head.

"Why didn't you let me?" said Hans quietly. "You would have been wholly blameless."

Elsa looked at him sidelong, opened her mouth and closed it, then said, "Do you know what King Caleb carved into your stomach?"

Hans did not; in the aftermath of the leg he'd almost forgotten about the other torments, and it had not occurred to him that Caleb's activities with the knife might possess any artistic or literary value. Now he held the collar of his sleeping shirt away from his chest and peered down at the raised red scars still healing on his stomach. Upside down and at this angle, he couldn't tell what they spelled out.

" _Morbreen erobrer vulkanen_ ," recited Elsa.

"Arendelle's national motto? I suppose he put it there to incriminate you."

"The same thought occurred to me, of course," said Elsa. "You knew, and I knew, that your death might be used as an excuse for further aggression. I may have only temporarily thwarted an international incident by not allowing you to die on Arendelle's soil, but it's better than the alternative. I have a little more time to decide what to do. I suppose I have you to thank for that."

"Without my father to answer to, Caleb will only grow bolder," said Hans.

Elsa looked at him strangely.

"That's right, your father— " she said hesitantly, something like sympathy in her eyes. She took a half-step toward the bed. Hans knew what she was about to say and cut her off.

"I wasn't looking for pity, Majesty," he muttered. "I know I deserve none."

"Hans…"

"I thank you for saving my life, Your Majesty," he said, his voice over loud and too formal. "I am entirely in your debt and at your mercy, and await your justice patiently. I am sure whatever you decide to do with me will be more than fair."

"Yes— yes, of course," said Elsa. "We— that is, Urgma thinks you'd better start exercising the leg soon or it won't heal properly. You should be able to start moving around a bit. Blank will help you, I'm sure. Urgma will tell you how to proceed. Do as she says and you'll be walking again in time."

Urgma had spent several grim hours per day for the last few weeks stretching and bending his good leg while Blank scowled at her from his place on the bad leg. It always hurt, but Hans would die rather than let her think he harbored a childish fear of pain in addition to being a treasonous murderer. In all likelihood he could have wept tears of blood and Urgma would not have noticed. He thought of re-learning to walk under Urgma's tutelage and half-laughed, half-grimaced.

"Your doctor displeases you?" said Elsa, one eyebrow raised.

"Urgma," said Hans without thinking, "is a brick wall. Who could object to a wall?"

"Urgma _is_ a brick wall," agreed Elsa, and laughed.

A second later she realized she was laughing in the presence of Hans Westergaard, her would-be assassin, and straightened her spine and looked down her nose at him. She nodded regally and swept from the room without another word.

* * *

 **A/N** : Sorry for the late update, I am just a pathetic overworked drone, but I love and adore all your encouragement! I didn't make up the trolls-as-malevolent-tricksters idea, that's really what their role is in Scandinavian lore. Food for thought, ain't it?


	5. Mobility, Of A Sort

Blank, it transpired, did not agree with Elsa and Urgma that Hans's period of bedrest must soon end. The day after Elsa's visit, Urgma entered the room with a pair of stout crutches and a basin "to catch any drips".

"What are you expecting to drip?" asked Hans, perplexed.

"If it don't come out one end, sure it'll come out other, the pain you're about to be in," she said placidly.

Hans swallowed, remembered that he had once waged battle against the nefarious pirate Jocham of the Skalding Sea— _and won_ — pushed his blankets away, and started to reposition himself. He could do this.

Hans got as far as dangling his good leg over the side of the bed before Blank (who had watched all this with a growing rumble of unease and displeasure) draped itself gently but immovably over Hans up to the waist, pinning him.

"Oh, no you don't," said Urgma, flapping her hands at Blank like she was fanning a flame. "He needs to walk now or he'll never walk again. Move, you daft big snowdrift."

Blank ignored her, as usual.

Hans tried reasoning with it.

"Come on, Blank," he said in the same soothing voice he would use with a fidgety colt. "You know it's for the best. Just...shove off…come on, now…" He pushed against Blank, who did not move.

"Now, Blank," he said in a deeper and more assertive voice, the very voice that had finally won Sitron's respect as an adolescent horse. "You do as I say and _shove off_."

He pushed harder against Blank, who did not move.

"Blank," he said, louder and more commanding still, "get _off_ and do it _now._ "

He pushed hardest of all against Blank, who did not move.

"Gods curse you, you useless sod, get— get off, _get off of me_ — "

Blank very casually opened its mouth and put Hans's head in it and closed its teeth till they were just touching his throat. Hans, his whole head enclosed by Blank's icy maw, held very still. Sitron had never done _that_ to him. Sitron's mouth wasn't big enough.

"Mmphuff muph," said Hans. All it got him was a mouthful of snow.

Blank let out a grinding vibration that buzzed through Hans's whole body till his teeth chattered. Then Blank carefully released its captive, settled more firmly on his legs, and began to polish its claws (more like vulture talons than anything mammalian, but retractable, and with two sets of thumbs per forepaw). Hans shook snow out of his hair.

"Urgma," said Hans levelly, "I think maybe we should start tomorrow."

Urgma grunted in assent.

* * *

Blank did not agree that they should try tomorrow, or the day after that, or the next.

On the fourth day, Elsa intervened.

"Still not walking?" she said, striding into the room with alarming briskness.

"Blank doesn't seem to want me to move," said Hans, trying not to sound feeble.

"No, _you_ don't want you to move. Blank is just a handy excuse."

"What?" Hans was taken aback. "Have you ever tried lifting this thing?" He shoved pointedly at Blank's shoulder, accomplishing nothing but, as he supposed, proving his point.

"It's obviously formed some sort of inexplicable and extremely ill-advised attachment to you," said Elsa, glaring severely at Blank, "and it is picking up on your reticence to get out of bed and stop having your meals spoonfed to you."

"My meals aren't spoon— "

"Shut up. You need to start walking again. You're acting like a baby and I'm too busy for this nonsense. When you can walk from the bed to the door and back again without falling over, you may have one boon."

"A boon?"

"Yes. If you're going to act like a baby I'm going to treat you like a baby." That stung a little.

"Of course it's not necessary to bribe me, Your Majesty," he said with as much dignity as he possessed (none). "If Blank can be gotten off my legs, I'll start putting them to use at once."

"I'm relieved to hear it," said Elsa. "Blank, come along." Blank, watching Elsa out of the corner of its eye and pretending not to, didn't come.

Elsa held one hand out, palm up, and curled her fingers around a femur-sized icicle that had just appeared there.

"Don't you want a treat?" she said in an entirely new tone. Blank blinked, as surprised as Hans to learn that Elsa's unrepentantly commanding voice could give way to one of such low, coaxing sweetness. Blank, like Hans, had no idea what to make of it.

"Isn't it pretty?" said Elsa, her voice sunk almost to a whisper, waving the icicle gently so that the light danced across its polished surface. It _was_ pretty. Translucent green specks of algae were suspended along its core, just like the marrow of a bone. It glinted blue or aquamarine or cerulean, depending on the way the light hit it. Hans felt that all other light in the room had dimmed or been consumed by this one mesmerizing bauble. He wanted to put it in his mouth.

Blank, as captivated as Hans, stretched its neck out to take the icicle in its teeth, but Elsa pulled it almost imperceptibly out of reach. Blank shifted its weight— it was now sitting only on Hans's good leg, from the knee down, but he still couldn't get out of bed, and sooner or later Blank would realize it was being had…

A thin sheet of ice solidified in the air between Blank and Hans. Blank, still caught by the unearthly glimmer of the icicle, didn't notice. Blank shifted forward another few inches, and the thickening wall of ice followed, curving around it.

In this way Elsa lured Blank off Hans's leg, till it had finally oozed right over the side of the bed like a glacier sliding down a mountain. With every inch she gained she gave the ice wall a silent nudge in Blank's direction. At last she let Blank close its teeth reverently over the icicle. It turned to bring its prize back to its post atop Hans's legs, smacked its nose against the foot-thick mass of ice, realized it had been tricked, and let out a howl like a tornado ripping through a canyon. Instantly Elsa extended the wall around Blank, penning it in one corner of the room where it could see but not access its charge.

"Neatly done, Your Majesty!" Hans yelled over the brain-melting sound of Blank's betrayal.

"What?" shouted Elsa.

"I said, neatly...never mind! Can't you make that wall thicker?" He pointed and raised his eyebrows, but Elsa was already packing more ice around Blank, blunting the sound to a low roar. Blank began hurling its body against the barrier with room-shaking thuds, but the ice appeared to be holding— for now. Hans had to smile.

"Your turn," said Elsa.

Hans stopped smiling.

That first try was by far the worst, because Hans had no way of preparing himself for it mentally. He got both legs over the side of the bed, leaned on the crutches Elsa had brought, and hauled himself off the bed, standing precariously on his one good leg. It hurt abominably— the nerves in his bad leg were unused to these new movements of both pelvis and ankle— but was just bearable. Hans stood like this for a good three minutes, just trying to breathe through the pain, his right foot hovering a little above the carpet.

"Well done," said Elsa, her voice so brightly supportive that Hans was sure she was making fun of him. He glared at her.

"Where's Urgma? Urgma wouldn't do this to me."

"Only because she doesn't think you're worth the effort. You're going to have to put your right foot on the floor eventually or it'll stick like that."

It took Hans two minutes more to lower his left foot an inch, so that it just touched the floor.

"Put a little weight on it or it doesn't count," Elsa said. She stepped closer, close enough for him to count the strands in her braid. (Six, enough for the braid to lie round instead of flat. Hans used a six-stranded plait rope when mooring to a suspected pirate vessel because it was harder to cut through than a twist.)

"I'm working on it," Hans grunted. He worked on it for another couple minutes without making visible progress. _Move, leg, move_ , he instructed himself. _It'll hurt, but move you must_. His leg did not cooperate. Elsa, not seeming to appreciate the considerable struggle he was having internally, got impatient.

"Come on, Hans, it won't hurt any less the longer you put it off. If you can put a little weight on your right leg— not all your weight, just some— I'll let you stop for today. Can you do that?"

Oh gods, she really was babying him. Hans was so embarrassed by her encouragement that he shifted his weight onto his right leg all at once.

The room jumped and juddered around him, all its light dimming while the throb in his leg burst into cannonfire. Hans discovered nerves he had not previously been aware of, running from his toes to, curiously enough, his eardrums, and every last one of those nerves was screeching. Or perhaps that was Elsa, whose face, blurred and worried, hovered upside down on the ceiling. When had she acquired the power of flight?

In the next instant, Blank's face replaced Elsa's, and gravity turned over yet again as Blank took Hans gently in its teeth and moved him to the bed. A coldness radiated from his midsection, and Hans for a brief moment rejoiced at this sign that he was going numb. But it wasn't paralysis, just an emptied bladder cooling on his clothes. Somehow, that Elsa should witness it hurt worse than everything. Hans thought he might shout at her, in his pain and humiliation, but he didn't get the chance before Blank interposed itself between Elsa and her patient, and hustled her out the door.

"Good blanket," Hans murmured through gritted teeth as Blank settled in its customary spot. Its soft cold tongue lapped comfortably against his sweating brow.

"Teach me ever to listen to that...that damned _ice witch_ again," Hans muttered bitterly.

Blank, still licking the salt from his face, reminded him it had teeth.


	6. Hobbling In The Right Direction

The upshot of that first abortive attempt at mobility was that Hans did not dare put off his recuperation a day longer. If he had not progressed past the fainting-and-wetting-himself stage of recovery by the next time Elsa visited, he knew he would just have to kill himself. That might be in as much as a week or as little as a few days; her visits were not predictable. Hans was not sure how he would manage it.

The first day after what Hans would forever think of as The Incident, Blank growled Urgma out of the room with unprecedented ferocity almost as soon as she stepped in.

"Her Majesty won't like this," she said from just outside the doorway. "I have my orders. I'm to get you on your feet, lad, or answer to her."

"It's no use trying it now, at any rate," said Hans. "Blank is in a mood. Let's try again later."

And Urgma, with evident relief, scurried away down the hall.

Blank _was_ in a mood, but Hans knew the snow thing well enough by now to understand if he was patient, he would find out what it wanted. Blank padded over to the side of the bed and settled on its haunches, staring at Hans with those astonishing sea-green eyes, and waited.

"I have to get out of this bed, Blank," Hans started. "I'm sorry, but I really— "

Blank interrupted him with a sound like two elk crashing into each other, antlers-first.

"Was that a yes?" Hans said helplessly.

Blank took hold of Hans's wool blanket in its teeth and pulled it off the bed, then dipped its head under his hand and waited.

"You'll help me?" said Hans, understanding. Blank didn't answer, which Hans took for assent. When he sat up and gingerly turned his legs over the side of the bed, Blank rose to its feet and stood there, big as a bed and at precisely the right height for leaning on.

"I'm going to regret everything about this," said Hans conversationally. If his voice wavered a little, Blank took no notice, just stood there with comforting solidity.

Hans hauled himself to his feet, using Blank's spinal ridge as a support. He kept all his weight on his left leg and on Blank's crest and tried not to think about what he was going to have to do next.

Blank sidled half a step away from the bed, so that Hans had to follow or fall.

Hans followed, hopping on his one good foot. Another half a step (this was half a human step; in blanket thing steps it was more like one-twentieth) and another after that, and soon Hans was hopping all around the room after Blank. His left leg was tired with it and his right leg ached from hanging, but at least it was something.

They managed this for fifteen minutes before Hans got too tired to go any further. Luckily Blank seemed to have anticipated this, and by the time Hans wore out they were right back at the side of the bed. All Hans had to do was flop onto it.

Strangely, after only those fifteen minutes of movement he felt a loathing for his bed. He did not want to lie back down. He did not want to be bedridden. He had been an athletic young man once, an industrious laborer even after his days on ship and saddle were ended. His months of inaction in Queen Elsa's dungeon followed by who knew how long in this room had worn away at some vital part of him, a part he wanted back with a vehemence that was as powerful as it was sudden. He wanted to leap to his feet and run around the room, and all he could do was hobble.

"Blank," he said gravely, "I'm going to be running inside of a week." Then his chin fell to his chest and he fell asleep.

* * *

Hans most certainly was not running in anything like a week, but progress he did. Part of the problem was, of course, his leg. As often as Blank thought prudent, it would slide off the bed and allow Hans to use it as a gigantic crutch. On the second day Hans put perhaps half a pound of pressure on his bad leg, and did not faint, so that was something. After the third day he did not even need to nap immediately after a hobbling-session.

But the leg was only _part_ of the trouble; the rest of Hans's muscles had nearly atrophied in the preceding months, and part of what hampered his progress was his inability to support his weight on his arms for very long. But for this, too, Blank had a solution. Quite simply, it annoyed Hans into health.

Initially it accomplished this by flopping its hindquarters onto Hans's face, so that he had to push it off or suffocate. Of course he had not a hope of moving the blanket thing if the blanket thing did not want to be moved, but Blank was very accommodating and did not suffocate Hans even once, only threatened to. Hans spent a good hour just pushing and pushing against a mountain of snow, until he was drenched in sweat and pink with the effort. Then Blank hove off him all at once, stretched out beside him, and licked the salt from his face and neck. Afterward they both napped for a while and did it again.

Once Hans realized what Blank was up to, it didn't have to go to such lengths to get him to exercise. Sometimes it would lie on Hans's legs and put its massive forepaws into Hans's upturned hands, and he would raise and lower them continuously, counting off the repetitions into the tens, the twenties, the hundreds.

Or Blank would bare its teeth, and Hans would wrap his hands around the titanic canines, and they would play a peculiar sort of tug-of-war that way.

But best of all was the day Blank permitted him to ride it, in a short pass around the room. He had to ride it side-saddle— his leg was not up to straddling something so massive as the blanket thing— and its flank molded itself to Hans's buttocks and thighs as perfectly as, well, snow. Blank took a short step and Hans almost fell off before his muscles remembered how to balance him. Even after he had figured out how to stay seated, it was a bumpy ride. Blank had a gait like two polar bears lashed together, and Hans had to hold on to one of its spinal spikes for stability.

After a long day of hobbling and stumbling and wrestling and lifting and riding, Blank would stretch out sidewise in Hans's lap so he could pick through its snow like a monkey grooming another, much larger monkey. These lazy comfortable evenings spent with the blanket thing were as curative for his mind as the exercise was for his body. He would root through cubic feet of the stuff, unearthing lumps of ice which he fed straight back to Blank. Blank seemed to enjoy this activity deeply, and sometimes when Hans's nimble fingers hit a certain spot in the small of its back, its crest would puff up and it would rumble like an avalanche.

Hans sometimes wondered if one of those pieces of ice was Blank's heart, or if Blank even had a heart. He felt instinctively that it did, and they were not.

He wondered if he would ever be allowed to find it.

* * *

Elsa reappeared a week and three days after The Incident.

"Urgma tells me Blank's up to its tricks again," she said flatly. "I don't know how to get through to you, I really don't. If you wait much longer— "

Hans did not wait for her to finish. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, where Blank was already waiting. They had just had a session two hours ago, and were both rested and eager to resume. He wasted a good deal of energy trying to make it look effortless to Elsa, and ended up almost falling over for his trouble when Blank twisted round to stare mockingly at him.

"How long has Blank been helping you?" said Elsa wonderingly.

"Since The— since last time you were here, Your Majesty." Hans felt himself flushing as red as his hair and focused on his steps. He was now able to put something like twenty pounds of pressure on his bad leg before passing out.

"Incredible," breathed Elsa. "It's like you're— " She stopped abruptly, but something in her voice made Hans forget his embarrassment and look up. She was looking at Blank, arms folded, eyes doubtful, and curious, and soft.

"Like you're _part_ of each other," she finished, still staring dreamily. "It's quite— it's really…"

"Your Majesty?" Hans prodded, and Elsa came to with a start.

"It's really a pity it's being wasted on you," she finished briskly. "As soon as you're able to do without it, perhaps I should see about sending it to the Dårlig Sykehus. No sense letting it—"

But she could not complete her sentence, because Blank had whipped its head around and levelled her with a look of such quelling sternness that she fell back a step.

"Perhaps...when your leg is quite healed," she finished hurriedly.

"As you see fit, Your Majesty," said Hans. His right hand, buried deep in Blank's haunches, scritched appreciatively.

"Anyway, this is all marvellous progress," she said briskly. It was plain she was eager to regain her footing in the conversation. "I would be interested to see how you fare with the crutches."

"I'm willing to try," said Hans. There followed a difficult half hour in which they tried to cajole, threaten and bribe Blank into letting Hans support himself on two sticks instead of a nice sturdy snowpile. Anyone would think from its dissatisfied rumblings that they had asked it to walk over hot coals. Even if Blank could be persuaded to let Hans stand alone, the moment Hans took a step it puddled around him, sounds of distress emanating from somewhere in its middle. As a compromise, Hans walked with a crutch in one hand and the other firmly planted in Blank's shoulder. In this way he managed a complete circuit around the room.

"Well, who ever would have believed it?" said Elsa. She was watching from the bed, which was the only place in the room where she wouldn't trip over Blank, and Hans wouldn't trip over her. It wasn't a large room.

Blank hustled Hans back over to the bed and nudged him onto it, but allowed him to remain seated upright. Then it settled on its haunches and looked expectantly from Hans to Elsa, and back again. Elsa blinked at it in confusion.

"What is it…?"

"Er...usually around this time I give it a treat," explained Hans. He didn't want to say he excavated hunks of ice from its guts and then fed them back to it, in case that was weird. Luckily, Elsa did not inquire further. Her face brightened, she held out one palm, and a bauble the size of a skull took shape upon it, curved and twisting and shot through with glints of green and blue. When it was finished, she presented it to Blank, who took it gingerly in its teeth and carried it to a corner to demolish noisily.

After watching Blank's progress for a few moments Elsa said, "I dare say you're hungry after your exertions. And it so happens that I didn't have a chance to eat before I left the palace, so I brought a little luncheon with me. Come on, sit back. We're eating."

Five minutes more found Hans and Elsa sitting on the bed, munching silently on the bread and cheese and salted trillfish she had brought. She was right, Hans _was_ hungry, and the portions of gruel that Ugma provided had been unable to keep up with his needs. He hadn't realized just how much he relished a bit of variety in his fare until now. It was everything he could do not to inhale his food as sloppily as Blank did. Elsa watched him pick the crumbs from the napkin that had held the rolls, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Then she gathered up the remains of their demolished meal, folded everything neatly away in her satchel, and turned to leave; and all the while Hans strove against his shyness and shame, to voice what was uncomfortable to say yet would be near criminal to leave unsaid.

When she reached the doorway Hans managed it. "Your Majesty," he said falteringly, "I thank you from— from the deepest part of me, for your kindness. I know I don't deserve a moment of it, but all the same— thank you."

Elsa looked at him more strangely than ever, her expression neither kind nor unkind, and she did not answer him.

* * *

Thereafter, though it was never commented on by either, Elsa's visits always concluded with dinner eaten together, accompanied by the sounds of Blank assassinating an icy treat in the corner. By the third week Hans had the idea to clear the work table that had previously held Urgma's medical implements, and cover it with a red-and-blue woven blanket that normally lived on the end of his bed. There was only one proper seat in the room, but if he dragged the table beside the bed he could sit there and give the chair to Elsa.

On the third week Hans successfully hobbled from the chair to the door and back again, using only a crutch. The following week Elsa, making good on her promise of a boon, brought him a book to read: _Flynnigan Rider's Adventures in the Piratical West_.

The sixth week, Elsa agreed to allow Hans to walk out of the room. It was too cold for him to venture from the building, but he had not seen anything outside this room in so long that even the chance to look down a hallway was a pleasure. Elsa accompanied him, and Blank of course was their faithful shadow.

The building they were in turned out to be a half-ruined fastness high in the mountains, ancient and sere. Hans's room was the smallest and the most sheltered from the mountain wind. Down a short hallway was Urgma's room near the kitchens; in another direction were offices and larger bedrooms, a solar, and the great hall.

Most of these rooms were uninhabitable, their walls riddled with gaps, their roofs crumbling. In the solar, the roof had blown off altogether; but Elsa, evidently determined to make it as comfortable as it must have been originally, had given it a vaulted roof of ice which trapped the sun's radiant warmth as well as any greenhouse roof. Crystalline and prismatic, the new ceiling broke the sunlight of this round tower room into a thousand splendid hues during the day. Hans stood stock-still when he saw it for the first time. Even better, through the ice-paned windows set into the concave walls, the whole southern part of the mountain range could be seen. He'd had no idea they were so high up. Birds of prey soared some distance below them, wheeling and plunging on updrafts only they could find.

Behind him, Elsa was busy laying a table with their dinner. Hans hurried to help her, and that afternoon they feasted in the pinkening daylight on fenalår, pickled green tomatoes, and sweet, rich rømmegrøt. Blank made a pile at their feet and licked their fingers clean afterward.

Hans, once mobile, had the run of the place. He preferred not to venture in the direction of Urgma's room and the warm kitchen where she spent most of her time, instead turning toward the great hall. He and Blank would walk from one end to the other, faster and faster, until the stiffness and soreness in his leg started to lessen. When he tired of this, he would pick up fallen bits of wall and flagstone and hurl them as far as he could down the hall, for Blank to fetch and bring trotting back. Or he and Blank would wrestle, or play tug-of-stick, or groom each other. More than once, tired from his exertions, Hans would lay full-length on Blank and nap in a sunbeam, sleepy and content. As weeks stretched into months his leg grew stronger and his arms regained their wiry power.

But it was the solar that became Hans's favorite room. He only ever went in there with Elsa, to linger over meals that Urgma prepared in the kitchens or they cooked on the hearth themselves. Their fare was less sophisticated than the elaborate preparations of Kongenhaavn, but more wholesome and satisfying— not least because the company was better. Elsa made dravle and rømmegrøt in a heavy-bottomed iron pot on the fire beside their table. Hans sliced potatoes and sauteed them in thick yellow butter with needles of rosemary, a simple meal he had grown to love during his naval career. And he made her beer porridge, which she ate of heartily when she could bring herself to stop laughing.

"Beer porridge? Has there ever been a more...more _bachelor_ dish in all of existence?"

Afterward, they might sit in silence for an hour or more, digesting their food. Or they talked about neutral subjects: Hans's progress, his years in the Navy, Elsa's ice powers in general and Blank's improbable existence in particular. When Hans had finished _Flynnigan Rider's Adventures in the Piratical West_ , Elsa brought him a book on the history of Arendelle, then sat reading it herself for hours after dinner while Hans busied himself practicing knots on a length of rope he'd found in a storeroom. He didn't mind; it was a book he'd read before, when he was still a Prince of the Southern Isles preparing to find himself a bride in Arendelle. He found it hopelessly endearing, this habit Elsa had of bringing him books to read and then monopolizing them before he'd even had a chance to crack the spine.

They never talked of the future, or of the past. It was safer that way.


	7. Tabletop Metaphors

Some months after his first steps, Hans finally broke into a shambling, uneven jog in the Great Hall, his walking stick echoing against the flagstones. Running— if that was what you called it— felt so good he did not want to do anything else until he near collapsed from exhaustion. Blank, orbiting him in anxious ellipses, wanted him to stop in a quarter of the time. Eventually the blanket thing just scooped Hans up onto its back and bore him back to his bed chamber. Hans allowed himself to be sat on and rumbled over at length. Elsa appeared around suppertime and watched in silent amusement as Hans cleared away triple helpings of cod porridge.

"Hungry this evening," she observed as he piled spoonful after spoonful of cloud cream over a bowl of dried-apple cake. Hans, blushing, arrested his spoon in its arc.

"I ran today," he muttered to his dessert bowl. "Overdid it, I think."

"That explains why Blank is in such a tiff," said Elsa. She helped herself to a more modest portion of dessert and tucked into it with evident enjoyment. "Go on, eat," she urged. "It's good. I didn't mean to embarrass you."

Released from his awkwardness, Hans polished off his bowl in a few minutes. Then he piled their empty dishes back on their tray and carried it to the kitchen. When he returned, Elsa was still sitting at the table, conjuring figurines of ice out of thin air and feeding them to Blank. Hans stood still in the doorway and watched: first a creature with a lumpen face disappeared between Blank's teeth, then a slight woman with a familiar point to her chin, then a slender man wearing a tiny shard of a crown.

"Looks like the King," Hans remarked, hobbling back over to his seat. Elsa's cheeks flushed faintly violet, her eyes dropped to her lap, and Hans's heart twisted in its cage. With four careless syllables, he had veered into trepidous waters. He'd have to be blind in more than just his left eye not to notice that Elsa carried a stern anxiety around with her, almost like well-managed terror, which was most easily brought to the fore by a mention of her parents. Hoping to smooth over his thoughtless comment he said, "From Fangensflukt. Do you...do you play?"

Fangensflukt was a strategy-based tabletop game which had long been popular in both Arendelle and the Southern Isles, something like chess or Hnefatafl. It also, Hans belatedly realized, translated literally to _Prisoner's Escape._ But Elsa, if she noticed the irony, did not say anything about it. After a moment she said,

"Yes, I play. My...father taught me."

Oh. _Out of the stewpot, into the fire_.

"I didn't, er…" Hans's mind, desperate to flee his body, started to count the tiles in the hearth. Elsa's breathing grew shallower and shallower.

Blank, attuned as ever to the atmosphere in the room, thrust its nose in Elsa's lap and its titanic rear in Hans's, thrumming for attention. _What a pair we make_ , Hans thought, digging his fingers through Blank's hindquarters. But at least he wasn't counting anymore, and Elsa was breathing more normally.

"Would you like to play?" she said suddenly, a little too loud, a little too intense, like she was saying something rehearsed. ""I'll make us a board."

Hans nodded, and Elsa waved her hand over the cleared table between them. A miniature rink materialized on it, demarcated into a hundred and sixty-nine squares. Elsa's cupped hands filled with icy archers and knights, which she arranged on the outer squares. At the center of the board she surrounded a figure of the Prisoner with spies and squires, and placed a little ship at each of the four corners. Finally, her brow creased in concentration, she sculpted not a King but a tiny Queen.

"Captor or Prisoner?" she asked, without a trace of irony. Hans wanted to laugh at the oddness of the whole situation— were they really about to play _Prisoner's Escape?_ And was she really letting him have first pick? — but he didn't, because her face was so pale and her voice so still and her shoulders so painfully tense. All he said was,

"Prisoner, I guess."

Elsa nodded briskly and placed the Queen near a corner, and the game began.

The object of the Prisoner was to escape from the center to one of the ships at the four corners of the board, using his spies and squires in various ways to accomplish this. The object of the Captor, or Queen, was to prevent escape by defensively moving the archers and knights around the board. If the Prisoner made it to a ship first, that player won; if the Captor made it to the Prisoner first, that player won. The rules were simple enough for a child to learn, yet the game was notoriously difficult to master. There were nearly infinite ways to vary one's gameplay to suit one's opponent. It was always interesting to play against someone new.

To correct the imbalance inherent in the rules, it was traditional to play two rounds to a game, so that each player had a chance at both offensive and defensive strategizing. Elsa played her first round intelligently, spacing her pieces out logically, pacing her moves. Neither of them spoke much, but it was a comfortable silence, with Blank's low rumble curling warmly around the edges. Elsa won the first game as Captor, suggested they complete the round, and won the second game as Prisoner.

"That breaks you," she said with satisfaction, clearing the board. "Want another go?"

Hans, who wasn't likely to say no to her in any case, _did_ want to play again. The game had been popular among his men, as good a way as any to while away an empty afternoon at sea. He'd played it against opponents who were aggressive, or cautious, or wise, or foolish, or devious. Elsa, he was beginning to suspect, had only ever played it against her father.

In their next game, Elsa won the first round, and Hans won the second. A tie.

"Again?" said Elsa, and to Hans's surprise something like pleasure had chased the tense stillness from her voice.

"It's very late…" he hedged. There was no clock in the room, but the moon was already starting to sink into the west. As desperate as he was to keep her here in this peculiar bubble of truce, he was afraid of being greedy.

"Oh, just one more?" she coaxed, just as if she were talking to Blank. Hans tried to ignore a completely inappropriate thrill that ran down his neck at the softness in her voice. "If you can break me in one more round, I'll grant you another boon."

"What— " he croaked out, his voice rough, and tried again. "What boon?"

"What would you like?" One strand of hair had fallen out of its knot low on her neck, one slim pale hand hovered waitingly over the board. Her eyes, flame-blue and luminous, were not looking at him like he was a burden she wished to be rid of. She was looking at him like he had something she wanted.

As long as she was looking at him like this he couldn't think of a favor that could be decently named, and so he picked at his grubby nails for a moment, thinking.

Rather _too_ grubby. "A bath," he said. "If I break you in one more game, I'd like a bath. A proper one, in a tub deep enough to hold me, with steam coming off the water and at least three towels to dry off with." He peeked back up at her; her eyebrows had risen nearly to her hairline and he thought, _Maybe a bath_ _wasn't_ _decent to name._ But he was sick to death of sponging himself off in three inches of tepid water; and she _had_ offered.

"All right," she said. "A bath it is. And if I break you…" She trailed off, thinking.

"You've already broken me," Hans pointed out. "You won the first round." Elsa hesitated a moment, then shrugged. They set up the board and began to play.

Elsa had a better training in traditional gameplay, but she only had one strategy for winning, and she lacked the confidence to improvise. She moved her pieces around like someone who had more experience reading about Fangensflukt than actually playing it.

Hans, on the other hand, was adaptable once he got a read on his opponent's style. In just twenty-three moves he won the first game as Prisoner— not a surprise, the Prisoner naturally held a slight advantage. The second game he won after an agonizing, perfectly silent campaign of no less than sixty moves, finally sweeping Elsa's Prisoner off the board with his Queen.

"That breaks me," said Elsa, her voice thick from tiredness. The sky was pink in the East, shading toward yellow, and Blank was snoring crunchily between them. They'd played through the night.

Elsa stood and held out her hand, and Hans had a wild moment of wondering if he was supposed to bow over it or kiss it or something, before he realized she only meant to shake. As if...as if they were _equals_. He took her hand in his and was surprised at the warmth he felt even through her silken glove. He wondered errantly what that hand felt like bare, and jerked back from the handshake like she'd stabbed him. Elsa started, and did she look _hurt?_ (Unthinkable, how could he possibly hurt her now?)

Hans felt his cheeks flaming, _damn_ that red hair, and hoped his beard concealed it.

Elsa lowered her hand slowly and said, "Well played."

"Thank you, Your Majesty," he said. She still looked upset, what had he said, what had he done?

 _You moron_ , he thought viciously at himself, _what_ _haven't_ _you done?_

One hand was around her front to clutch her other arm. It was the hand Hans had recoiled from, and he realized: she thought he didn't want to be touched by her.

"Your Majesty— " he said, unsure of himself, so twisted up by the wounded look in her eyes that he forgot to be the self-loathing unlucky thirteenth and was, for a moment, just Hans. "Thank you for the game. And for everything you've done for me. I don't deserve any of it, but I'm grateful."

"I'll just talk to Urgma about that bath," said Elsa, her voice stripped of emotion. "You should get some sleep."

And Hans was tired, so very tired, but though he stumbled back to his room and lay curled against Blank's bulk until the sun had crested overhead, he didn't sleep a wink.

* * *

Two days later, after a long day of throwing bits of rubble around in the Great Hall to exercise his limbs (and exorcise his feelings), Hans returned to his bedroom to find Urgma standing like a sentinel over a very commodious bath. He had no idea who had heated the water, or carried it, or for that matter where the shining copper tub had come from. It was so massive it could have held two quite comfortably. Curls of steam whirled in almost cartoonish arabesques over its surface, and a scent like pine needles and snow filled the room. There was a stack of white towels as tall as Hans himself, neatly folded on a chair beside the tub. Elsa had delivered his bath with almost insolent exactness. Hans grinned and stepped forward.

Blank slithered past him and thrust its face in the steam.

"Careful, Blank," Hans cautioned, shrugging out of his linen shirt, then his woollen trousers and knitted stockings. Urgma's presence did not bother him unduly; she had been the one to bathe him when he couldn't bathe himself, and there were certain advantages in having a brick wall for a caretaker.

It turned out Hans couldn't get into the tub without Urgma's help, anyway: the sides were very high and quite slippery. But once he was settled in, Urgma gathered up his laundry and shut the door wordlessly behind her. Blank paced around the edges of the tub for fifteen solid minutes, unhappy at being excluded from this new procedure, but finally settled on the bed to keep unblinking vigil on Hans's ablutions.

Several cloths and a finely-milled bar of soap had been provided, and Hans set to with gusto, soaking and scrubbing and soaking some more. He even shaved, dropping handfuls of shaggy red beard over the side into the ash bucket. He couldn't reach the room's only mirror from here, but that was all right, he'd gotten used to shaving by feel on the _Gale's Chance_ , and only cut himself once. The water somehow never got cloudy with grime, nor did it cool off. Elsa must have magicked it to stay hot: a kindness which, like all kindnesses, he did not deserve. Hans sat in fragrant water up to his chin, looked down at the water-distorted lines of himself and thought, _How on earth did it come to this? She was supposed to execute me publicly, not rescue me and feed me and bathe me. How have I become, of all things, her ward?_

How had she become, of all things, his friend?

Hans dunked his head under the water to relieve his feelings, and only came up when he heard Blank frantically butting its head against the side of the tub, jarring the water into a series of sonic thumps. He could hold his breath much longer than Blank thought he could, but he hated to fret the poor thing. After that he stayed upright.

Hans's only clue as to the passage of time was his gradually-wrinkling digits. When his fingers and toes resembled the gnarled pit of a peach, he decided, he would get out.

Easier said than done. Hans tried to get out by himself, but wasn't quite limber enough to manage it, and Blank, so useful for almost everything else, didn't know how to help and so just kept poking its cold wet nose in Hans's belly. Hans called for Urgma, first quietly and then louder, but she must have been way down in the kitchen, because she didn't come. Finally, after an awful lot of undignified thrashing, Hans decided to just tumble over the side and hope for the best. Blank would catch him, he was sure.

Blank _did_ catch him, in a slippery tangle of wet limbs, and bore him over to the bed to deposit there where it was safe.

"Blank, I'm soaking through the sheets," Hans protested, trying to get up, but Blank, who had had _absolutely enough_ for one day, just climbed on top of him and rumbled threateningly. The stack of towels sat on the chair, quite untouched. Hans was unable to struggle out from under Blank, Blank refused to move, and eventually Hans just accepted it and fell asleep like that.

Thus concluded his first bath.

When he woke, the tub was gone, the towels were gone, and the ash bucket containing his beard was gone. He was chilled from sleeping on wet sheets, and gratefully clothed himself in his (now-clean) laundry. He picked up the little hand-mirror from his bedside table and inspected his shaven face. He was surprised to find he did not like it. The scars that his beard had hidden shone purple in the candlelight, ugly and brutish. But even the scars could not disguise the familiarity of those narrow lips, the crease in the cheek, that unspeakable chin. Beardless, he looked exactly like Hans Westergaard, Unlucky Thirteenth of the Southern Isles. With a beard, he could be anyone. Disgusted, he threw the mirror down and knew he'd never shave again if he could help it.


	8. Storytime

Elsa did not visit the mountain prison again for some time after the game. Of course Hans tortured himself replaying the moment he'd repudiated her friendly handshake, but when she did finally reappear two weeks later he was mostly just glad his shaven beard had had time to grow back. A wholly respectable stubble, now kept trim each morning, hid his scarred cheeks decently from view.

"Your whiskers're coming in nicely," was Elsa's only comment; and so he knew that she preferred him bearded, too.

No reference was made to anything either one of them did or did not say or do before parting the week before. But Hans did thank Elsa profusely for the bath.

"Truly," he said, "it was heavenly. I'll be dreaming about it forever. I stayed in for hours. Did you magic the water to stay hot?"

Elsa blinked, then laughed, then said, "Urgma put some coals underneath before you got in."

Hans laughed, too. "That didn't occur to me," he said. "In the Southern Isles we take baths to cool off, not to warm up."

"Even in the winter?"

"In the winter," Hans said cheekily, "we hurry."

"Well, I'm glad it was everything you dreamed a bath could be," said Elsa, leading the way into the solar, where a fire was already laid. "Quick game of Fangensflukt before dinner?"

From then on, they played a game or two most times she visited. Sometimes without warning they would look at each other and unspoken between them would pass an understanding that _this_ game, _right now_ , was the most important game of Fangensflukt ever to be played, that on it rested not only their honor but the very fate of the world. They would descend into frenzied competition which ended only when one broke the other, often not until the sun was starting to come up. Elsa was turning out to be more adaptable than Hans had thought.

At first these rivalries were carried out in quivering silence, but once when she had turned back his third espionage campaign in a row, Hans completely forgot he was playing Queen Elsa of Arendelle and blurted at his carven gamepiece, "Damn you blanche-livered ditherer, pull your knuckles out of your cock locker and _spy!_ " The words dangled obscenely in the silent room; even Blank had ceased to rumble, and Hans remembered with a vengeance where he was. He turned pale and clapped his hand over his mouth; but Elsa was doubled over laughing now, her cheeks puffed out with it, her fist in her mouth.

"What— on earth— " she gasped, " — is a _cock locker?_ "

If Hans could have crawled under the table, he would have. Instead he said weakly, "It's a— I'm so sorry, that was completely inapprop— "

"Come now, the damage is done, you might as well tell me." If Hans hadn't so thoroughly wanted to die, or at least to have never been born, he would have noticed how enticing her laugh was, with a helpless little wheeze behind it that made him feel a lot funnier than he actually was.

"It's a, um, a vulgar term for...ah." Hans could not go on. Was she _really_ going to make him say it? _Out loud?_

"Yes?" Elsa had mastered herself. Now she was just torturing him. There was a wicked glint in those angelic blue eyes that Hans did not like one bit. "Go on."

"... _for arsehole_ ," Hans muttered.

"I didn't catch that," said Elsa sweetly. "Once more, with feeling?"

" _ARSEHOLE!_ " yelped Hans. Urgma, just coming in with their tray, sniffed and rolled her eyes, and Hans pretended to go use the pot until dinnertime.

At other times, their games of Fangensflukt were quick, light-hearted, and distracted by conversation. Hans was reasonably well-read, but he found that compared to Elsa's book-learning he might as well be illiterate. She had been locked up for ten years with nothing to do but read or go mad. He had more practical knowledge, she knew more theory.

She also told him folk tales of Arendelle that had never appeared in any of the histories he'd read. One evening, idly running his fingers over the raised scars on his belly, which he could feel even through his linen shirt, he asked,

"What's the meaning behind _Morbreen Erobrer Vulkanen?_ I know it's Arendelle's motto, but I've never been able to make sense of it."

"It's an archaic tongue," said Elsa. "Do you know what it translates to?"

"The...the mother glacier conquers the volcano?" guessed Hans. There were linguistic ties between archaic Arendian and the folk tongue still spoken in some of the more remote Isles.

"Conquers, subdues, overcomes, yes. In a way it's literal," said Elsa. "This whole mountain range is volcanic, pocked with hot springs and steam vents. The steam melts the glaciers in the mountains, which give us our drinking water, which condenses over the western range, which falls as snow, which turns back into glacier. Arendelle may seem cold and inhospitable to Southerners, but we understand it in the North; it gives as much as it takes away. More, sometimes, if you know where to look. My father always said our motto was meant to be an instruction. Ice will always defeat fire; be patient, be cold and calm, conceal your true feelings so they can't be used against you. Remain cool and unmoved while your enemies burn themselves out. But I don't believe that's what it means at all. Oh, a poker face has its uses in the council chamber, but there is a deeper truth about the North buried in those words. Something I think my father, for all his wisdom, never understood. He had too much of the South in him."

Hans leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out in front of him, watching her from beneath the lowered lid of his one good eye.

"There is a story they tell," Elsa went on. "I don't remember where I heard it first— it wasn't in any books, and I can hardly imagine someone telling it to me when I was young. Everyone in Arendelle just _knows_ it. It's the story of Arendelle's grandmother. Isloga."

"Isloga lived in these mountains before the North was white, when the trolls were the size of hills and did not ask or bribe or trick, but took. The trolls ate fire, as they have always done, as they always will do; but they were so huge that they had an appetite that no human's hearth-fire could sate. They stirred the people into war, that they might feast on the fires of burning villages. They turned sister against sister, mother against son, that they might sip the flames from the pyres they lit. The trolls grew larger, and the people were nothing but livestock to them.

"The father of trolls was the mountain called Åge. You can see it there, very far away." Elsa pointed to a speck of distant gold through the eastern window. "It is the last point of light you see when the sun sets. It is the highest mountain in the North, with a crest shaped like the nose and beard of a godly being. In those early days Åge was restless, and often would rain fire down into the valleys where the people lived.

"It is said that the trolls are pieces of Åge's fire that cooled and hardened in the valleys, coming to life with some of his power in their mineral veins. They ate fire as we eat meat, fire being what they were made of. But they took more than they needed. They were gluttonous and greedy, and Isloga saw her people dying in the fires the trolls had stoked. She became angry.

"Now Isloga was a beautiful woman, the daughter of a Chieftainess: tall and strong she was, with muscles like a man's, her head crowned with hair so flaming red that even the trolls dared not use their magic against her. One day she combed her hair and washed her body in a spring, and then climbed to the very top of Åge. She stood there at his peak, hands and feet bleeding from her climb, and she looked the god Åge in the eye. She gazed on him boldly as she stripped away her garments, and he was so overcome with lust for her that he wedded her that very moment.

"But Åge was a volcano, and Isloga was a mortal woman, and their tryst could not last long. He poured himself into her, scorching-hot and deadly, till her screams rent the earth. Three times he did this, and on the third time Isloga conceived by him a child, which was born even as its mother was consumed by flame. But though Isloga's human body lived no more, her will could not be so easily destroyed, and she was not yet ready for death. Her cooling body became the glacier that still rides her husband Åge, and keeps him too busy to rain fire upon Arendelle as he once did. Her tears of pain and rapture became our rivers, her birthing blood our lakes, and her dying breath fell upon the land as snow for a hundred years. Blessed so abundantly by her legacy, the North might have been a paradise. But the trolls still lit their fires, stirred hatred in the hearts of the people, and turned father against daughter, and brother against brother.

"The child that had been born to Åge and Isloga was a girl, but she was not fully mortal; nor was she fully a god. She was half of both, and more than either. She grew to adulthood on the slopes of her father, and fire flashed from her fingertips. She played in the coldness of her mother, and ice fell from her palms. And her mother whispered to her, too quiet for her father to hear: _Grow, daughter, and go down the mountain. Make your brothers, the trolls, submit to you._ _Make your human sisters safe._ In time the child became a woman, named herself Hildis, and went down the mountain.

"She saw that the trolls had slaughtered nearly all of her human kinfolk, and she was angry. She saw children starving and squabbling for what scraps their parents would leave them, and she was angry. She saw the power that the trolls had taken over the minds of the people, and she was angry.

"She went to the largest troll, who was a leader among his brethren, and stood before him with her hair shining on her bare shoulders, and he looked at her with lust, as their father had looked on her mother. But when he tried to wed her, she filled his mouth with ice from her hand; she filled every crack and every cavity in his body with ice, and it split him apart at the seams, until he burst into dust. For ice is stronger than stone.

"Then Hildis went to his brother, and to his sister, and did the same to them. She filled a hundred trolls with ice and burst them, until the only trolls left were those small enough to hide or wise enough to surrender. And so Hildis made the trolls submit. Now she turned to her other half-siblings, the people of the mountains, from whose minds the cruel magic of the trolls was beginning to fade.

"A hundred years had passed since her mother had left the realm of humans and climbed Åge. In that time the people suffered and many died, for they did not know how to live in the cold. But Hildis knew, and she taught them. She became their Queen, and took the strongest among them to be her husbands and wives. For thousands of years it was to her that our altars were built, our sacrifices burned, our prayers offered up. It is from her line that our Queens and Kings are born. And her mother Isloga still lies pale and cold over the slopes of Åge."

Elsa watched the dying fire as she spoke, and Hans watched it too. It flickered and undulated in time to her voice, and a part of Hans— the part that used to go tugging on Lars's coat-sleeves for a bedtime story, the part that hid in the library poring over illustrated atlases— part of Hans believed every word of it. Part of Hans saw things in the flames that the rest of him would be hard-pressed to explain for years afterward.

Her story ended, Elsa looked over at him again. She seemed to be waiting for him to speak. A jumble of thoughts bounced around his skull, unable to be sorted, most of them too bright or too sharp or too eager for him to look at directly. All he could say was,

"Is it true?"

What an idiotic thing to say! But Elsa seemed somehow to understand what he was really asking, because she nodded.

"The parts that matter are true," she said. "I don't know if there was really a woman named Isloga, or a god-child named Hildis. But I know that there is power here that you will not find anywhere else. It can be a cruel power, but it is all we have, and we depend upon it. Perhaps our power is like the ice: perhaps it can only exist here where it is cold and dangerous and rough. Perhaps it would melt in the South.

"My people grew soft when the wide world came calling. We adopted your names and your laws, your words and your gods, and we forgot to be what we are. The stories are just stories now. Folk tales that no one believes, about people who drip magic from their fingers, descendants of a kin-killing Queen. Stories we clean up and _soften_ , to tuck our children in at night, just before we blow out the light and lock the door against the wind and the snow."

Hans had heard bitterness in Elsa before, but this was different. This was not anger directed at him, or even at herself. It was anger at the softness of a people who had locked her away because could not see her for what she was.

"Your parents were afraid of you," he said quietly, knowing it wasn't a good enough reason, knowing it wouldn't help to say aloud.

"I was just a little girl," she said thickly. "I didn't want to hurt anyone. They took away Anna's memories of what I did to her, but they left me mine. They _let me remember_. And all those years I felt things I couldn't understand— I loved them, but another part of me hated them, hates them still. They were good rulers and wise; my mother was a beloved Queen to her people. It's what everyone tells me, and I believe them. They were good rulers, but they were _terrible parents_."

Elsa crumpled forward and before he could think about the appropriateness of it Hans had sprung forward to catch her. He knelt on the floor supporting the shaking queen in his arms, one gloved fist wadding up the shoulder of his shirt, the other squeezing the fingers off his right hand. Was she weeping, or merely trembling? Did it bring her relief?

Hans was not sure how long they stayed there like that. It felt like a long time, and not long enough. Then Elsa was collecting herself, smoothing out the creased yoke of Hans's shirt, sitting back in her seat. But her right hand remained in his, and Hans remained on his knees.

"They were afraid of you because _they_ were weak," he said. "Not because you are."

Elsa nodded and sniffled. "You aren't afraid of me." It was not a question. "You were never afraid of me. Not even on the night of my coronation. I was afraid of myself, but you weren't."

Hans looked down at their hands, the heat of her still touching him through the impersonal medium of her glove. He shook his head. "No, Your Majesty. I never was."

"Why is that, Hans?" Then, before he could answer, "Why did you do it?" Her voice thought about cracking, but didn't.

"I don't know," he said numbly. "It doesn't make sense. I didn't plan it or...or even think it would work. I _can't_ have thought it would work. I _know_ you can't marry into a crown, that's just basic coronal succession—" Hans gently disengaged his hand and sat back on his heels.

"There is something hard in you," he said, "something hard and strange and frightening, and you keep it well hidden. Not the ice, although the ice comes from it. And you soften it for other people, you round out its edges and you explain it away."

"I didn't ask about me," said Elsa, "I asked about you."

"You come from hardness," he went on resolutely, "and hard is what you are, whatever you may try to do to change that. But I come from something less noble. I was born in ugliness, and I grew up in ugliness, and ugly is what I am now." This was coming out all wrong. Hans hadn't meant to say any of this and now, hearing the words aloud, it felt feeble and insufficient. Like making excuses.

"We have a story about a messianic daughter in the South, too," he said, "but it ends somewhat differently. There's a tradition in the Isles that a thirteenth child carries all the luck of the family in their fingertips, for good or ill. If it was a thirteenth daughter, a sister of twelve brothers, she was a blessing, she carried the tides upon her shoulders, melted the icebergs into springwater, that sort of thing. But a thirteenth _son_ , now that was a cursed thing, a wretched thing, whose very existence would be a scourge on his family. Some people say it was a prophecy made long ago, to an ancestor of the King. Most know it as nothing more than an old wives' tale, but my people can be superstitious. Anyway, how likely is it, _really_ , that someone will have twelve boys in a row, and then another? But my parents had their twelve sons, and suddenly this old wives' tale was all anyone could talk about. The royal oracle predicted a queenly maiden with eyes like the sea that bears our ships, and hair shining like the silver sands of our coasts. He seemed...very certain, and he had never been wrong before. There were celebrations in the streets. They held parades and feasts and tournaments in honor of the coming princess. And then...I was born.

"I came early, shriveled and red and not in any way female, not even if you squinted. I used up the last of my mother's fertility. If a daughter was supposed to be the champion of the Southern Isles, I was indeed its curse. The Unlucky Thirteenth whose very existence was an offense. The first thing I remember ever wishing for was to have been born a girl; the second was not to have been born at all."

Hans, looking at the bottom four inches of her gown as he spoke, decided she probably didn't need to hear him whine anymore.

"Forgive me, Your Majesty," he said. "You asked me why, and instead of a clear answer I have given you a winding history. I don't blame my family for what I did. I don't blame the oracle, or the people, or the story. It was my doing, not theirs. I am only trying to tell you what I am. I felt sorry for myself for a long time; I thought I was ill-used. But maybe I had it wrong. Maybe they were right to hate me. They could have had a daughter who was everything good, or a son who was everything _else_. And they got me. "

Elsa, sitting back in her seat, moved one hand restlessly. When he looked up, he couldn't get a read on her face, but she did not look happy.

"So that's your answer," said Elsa, clenching and unclenching her fingers. "You're just...inherently evil? You once told me not to be the monster they feared. It is still the _only advice_ that's ever truly helped me, and it came from _you_ of all people. Follow it yourself."

Hans hung his head. "And what if I _am_ that monster?"

"What if _I_ am?"

Hans blinked. "But you're not," he said. If he knew anything, he knew that. "Your Majesty, you're…"

"I'm what?"

 _Hard and wise and kind and stronger than anyone I've ever met_.

"You're the _hero_. I'm just the villain who gets defeated in the first act."

"You know, Hans," she said in the smooth voice of ultimate exasperation, "you're very good at knowing other people, but you don't know _shit_ about yourself." She left him then, with nothing but the scent of pine needles and snow.

* * *

 **A/N: Raise your hand if your favorite trope is Dirty Origin Myths As Symbol Of Growing Sexual Tension. Anyone? No? Just me?**


	9. Work To Do

Hans slept, and ate, and chased Blank around the castle. Blank, for once, could match him for restlessness. The next time Elsa visited, she was abstracted and silent— more silent than usual. Blank, who usually resolved tension between its humans by forcing them to pet it until they lightened up, lashed out at Hans when he tried to get it to lie down and stop pacing.

"It's probably just sun-sickness," said Elsa reassuringly. Hans had backed away from Blank's teeth in a hurry— not that he expected it to actually _hurt_ him, but nothing got the heart pounding like a warning snap from a snow monster the size of a house.

The days _were_ getting longer, almost intolerably long. The sun rose at four in the morning and didn't go down till eleven at night. Probably why Hans couldn't sleep lately, instead tossing and turning and kicking off his blankets. Whoever would have thought he would miss the dark?

"It doesn't get like this in the Southern Isles," he said petulantly, and instantly regretted it. "Forgive me, Your Majesty. I'm being childish."

"It _is_ hard, adjusting," admitted Elsa. "It makes your moods strange. Murder rates almost double during this season. Suicides, too. Then again, birthrates in nine months will quadruple, so I guess we more or less break even."

"The North is strange," said Hans.

"It can be," agreed Elsa. "Sun-sickness never really afflicted me, but lots of other people have it and it does not simplify running a country. And don't even get me started on planning a wedding. If I have to pretend to have an opinion on one more forkful of cake, I'm going to run screaming into the mountains."

"I don't know about screaming," Hans said, "but you _do_ take to the mountains. Every three or four days, I'd say."

"Yes, and my sister's not taking it well." For half a moment they both weren't sure whether they were allowed to talk about Anna; then the moment passed, and they were talking about Anna whether it was allowed or not.

"She knows I'm here, then?" Hans asked delicately.

"She's figured it out. I think. Or she will soon. She knows I'm keeping something from her, and she doesn't like it. I should tell her. I should have told her months ago. By rights, I shouldn't even _be_ here."

"Neither should I," said Hans. "Why _are_ you? I'm no longer at death's door; I'm secure, I won't escape. You don't have to...come here...anymore."

"Don't _you_ start in on me," grumbled Elsa, which wasn't an answer at all. "She knew you were in the dungeon; I wrote to her when you'd been there a month. I didn't want her to find out from someone else. She was in Vakretta then, with Kristoff; threatened to come straight home, but I talked her down. I told her I'd make sure you were gone before she got back, and...well, I did. Technically."

"And now?"

"She hasn't asked where I moved you, and I haven't told. I don't think she really wants to know. But she's figured out I've been leaving the castle, and she's worried about me."

"You don't have to worry her, you know. Wouldn't it be easier if you…"

"Stayed away?"

"Yes."

They both lapsed into silence. The sun beat in on them through the ice-paned windows, casting harsh shadows on the wall behind them. They'd not even bothered to light the fire today, and were supping on bread and compote.

 _Easier if you stayed away_ danced around and around his skull. _Easier if you stayed…_

How could he bear it if she did? But if she was to stop seeing him, wasn't it better that she do so immediately? Before he grew more dependent on her company, on her laugh and the kindness of her glinting, sea-blue eyes?

Yes. Better for everyone if she never came back. Hans was just about to say this aloud when Elsa asserted,

"Anyway, it's quiet up here. I can get more work done. And it's _my_ castle. Why shouldn't I visit my own castle, if I've a notion to?"

Hans swallowed, his heart thudding harder than it had when Blank threatened to take an arm off. _Say it_ , he ordered himself, _say it. If you tell her not to come anymore, maybe she won't._ But he couldn't. He'd gotten as near as possible to uttering those words, and could get no nearer. Instead he said feebly,

" _Do_ you get work done, up here? I've...never seen it."

"We-ell…" Elsa reached into the gray leather satchel she customarily brought into the solar and extracted a large folio, which she laid on the table. "I always _bring_ work, but with one thing and another it's been a while since I've actually, you know…" Then, defensively, "I got a lot done while you were still unconscious. That was a productive month."

"I'm sorry to have broken your streak, then. What...what sort of work?" He didn't really expect her to discuss official business with him, so he was surprised when she actually opened the folio and spread its contents on the table.

"Budget," she groaned. "Weddings are bloody expensive, and so is everything else. We're having a good year, but somehow things keep slipping through the cracks. It doesn't help that I appear to be the only member of my counsel who knows how to add two numbers together and get the same answer every time. I keep catching mathematical errors from my _accountants_ , of all people."

"Not a good sign," Hans admitted. "Budgeting was always the most tedious part of running a ship, too. The captain of the first ship I was on had a very slapdash attitude toward finances. I worked out a sort of system for him, and the bastard court-martialled me for it."

"Why would he do that?" Elsa folded her arms skeptically.

"Well, it turned out he'd been skimming. I brought the numbers to my father and he gave me my own ship. I went on using the same system, because it worked."

Elsa tilted her head to one side. "What kind of system?" she asked, cautiously interested.

"Sort of a flexible formula that can accommodate any number of variables," said Hans. "I'm not good with abstract numbers, so I worked up a model to help me keep track of everything, keep the numbers in balance, ensure that available funds were being used efficiently and all that. The men were always paid a living wage, and the food and lamp oil and other necessaries were accounted for. And it caught, er, _mathematical errors_ pretty handily. Lots of times they really are just mistakes, and you resolve them. But when those mistakes show up in certain patterns... Like I said, I don't do well with bare numbers, but if you plug enough information into one of these models, you can find out almost anything."

"I don't suppose you still have copies of this miracle formula," said Elsa, stacking the pages up and sliding them back into their folder.

"It's a matter of official record," said Hans. "The court-martial was eight years ago, everything came to light then. And all of my paperwork aboard the _Nordlys_ was filed with the Kongenhaavn Treasurer-General. It's not available to the public, but if you contact my brother Lars and explain why you want it he might send you a copy. I, er, wouldn't write to anyone else, though."

"I see," said Elsa. "Well, maybe I will. In the meantime, this sandwich isn't going to eat itself."

* * *

Hans, under Urgma's supervision, began repairing a sloop he found in an old boathouse, and then took it out on the lake while Blank yowled malignantly at him from the shore. It was not easy getting into the gently rolling boat without messing up his bad leg, but as soon as he was out on the lake, the old instinct kicked in. He rowed himself around with more grace and ease than he was capable of showing on dry ground these days. He felt brief stretches of peace, caught between the glassy green water and the velvet sky and the benevolent shushing of the waves against the distant shore. Once, under sway of the sun-sickness, he made Urgma a cheeky bow and offered her a turn about the lake. Perhaps sun-sick herself, she accepted, and sat wordlessly airing her snow-white ankles in one end of the boat while he rowed. She almost even smiled.

Perhaps to soothe her conscience on the Anna front, Elsa did begin to work more openly up at the castle. By the time the sun was setting at a more reasonable ten o'clock, Hans recognized one of his own charts on the table after dinner. He didn't say anything about it, just went on punching stitches through salvaged canvas with a bone needle. He was hoping to put a sail on his tiny boat in time to catch the fall winds.

"Mmph," grunted Elsa during one of these busy evenings. "Why isn't this working?"

Hans put down his lapful of sail and limped over to Elsa's writing-desk. "Wrong column," he said, pointing. "You've got your imported fish under _Exports_ and your exported fish under _Imports_."

Elsa _tsk_ ed and rubbed out the mistake. "Your handwriting is atrocious," she said grumpily. "I can barely decipher these charts."

"Well, I made them for my own use," he argued. "They were never intended for public consumption. Anyway, they probably need updating. Budgeting for a single ship's bound to be different from budgeting for a whole navy."

"I've noticed," said Elsa drily. She worked for another minute or two and threw down her pencil. "It's no use. If I have to look at these numbers one more minute I'm going to bury my cursed navy in an avalanche."

"Would you like me to, erm…?" Hans offered carefully. There was no reason she should want his help, but they _were_ his charts and he knew how to interpret them. Elsa shrugged and went to pet Blank while Hans settled down at her writing desk.

Budgeting for an entire navy _was_ a whole different animal, Hans soon discovered. His charts were going to need to be significantly expanded. Also, he was beginning to suspect that the half of Elsa's navy that wasn't skimming off the top was feeding from the bottom. Hardly surprising given the state that it had fallen into after the King and Queen died. Hans knew from his reading that the whole country had gone into a sort of political and military stasis until Elsa's coronation. Inertia wasn't good for any size organization, let alone one so large as a Navy or a whole country. It was only a matter of time before _that_ soured.

Elsa actually went so far as to leave Hans with a copy of her budget overview.

"I have the other copy," she said sternly. "If you try to change any of these numbers, I will know. This is just so you can finish that wretched model. You're only to work on it with Urgma watching you; you are not allowed to squirrel away any of this information or make any copies of your own, you understand?"

Hans nodded and accepted the documents solemnly.

Urgma kept the pages locked in her room when Hans wasn't using them. He would work on them all morning, break for lunch and an hour on the lake, then return to the budget in the afternoon. When he was too brain-fried to go on looking at columns of imports, exports and military provisions, he sorted and stacked everything neatly, including all scratch paper and annotations, and returned it all to Urgma. Then he would go play with Blank in the grassy courtyard until his limbs were as tired as his mind. On evenings when Elsa came to the castle, he would explain his progress over dinner and well into the night. For two weeks budget was all they talked of. Elsa started coming to the castle every other night, just to keep up.

Hans did not not mind the work. He found he liked being useful.

"I've been showing all your calculations to Kai," she informed him early one morning. They weren't inclined to played Fangensflukt now, with their mental faculties so drained by their meetings. They just sipped peaceably on mugs of small ale and picked at a tray of sandwiches Hans had made around sundown.

"Yes?"

"He reckons your math is solid," she said. "And your instincts about my Navy were dead-on. A full quarter of my officers will need to be replaced, and I haven't the first idea how to go about that or where to find their replacements. And you knew it right away."

"I didn't say they were—" Hans began.

"You didn't have to," she said wearily. "I could tell what you were getting at. I didn't trust you. Of course I didn't. But I thought we might use your old charts; since those were devised in your own interest, I figured I could at least trust _them_. Kai agreed that it was worth a look. He's been with me every step of the way. Double-checking, and triple, every mark you put to paper. And you're right: your model _does_ work. Catches a lot of...errors. I'm sick just thinking of how long it's been going on. I hardly know who to trust, anymore."

"You couldn't have known, Your Majesty."

Too tired for niceties, Elsa waved his words impatiently away. "I'm going to have to make a lot of changes. In a way I wish I didn't have to know this now, _right now_ , with the wedding in less than a month. But I suppose it's better to know than not know. Weddings are expensive; lots of cream rises to the top, lots of little fingers dipping in. I'm going to need more from you."

"Your Majesty?" Hans could hardly believe what he was hearing. "I'm glad to help— I _want_ to help— but you can't trust me. You _know_ you can't trust me."

"Yes, I do know that," sighed Elsa. "Thank every god that I'm good at math, and can check your work myself. Thank god I have Kai, to check you and me both. So far your work has been invaluable, and— I hate to say it— accurate. Trustworthy. But I still can't trust _you_. At the very least, there's someone I need you to talk to, before I let you look at anything important. And we need to do it now. Tonight."

Hans raked his fingers through his hair and noticed for the first time he'd not brushed it that day. He'd been up with the sun, at three-thirty that morning. It was almost midnight now. More than twenty hours he'd been awake, and he was tired down to his bones. His eye hurt. His leg hurt. His mind was heavy and thick as beer porridge.

"What would you have me do, Your Majesty?"

Elsa stood up, wrapped herself in her cloak and handed a second one to Hans.

"We are going to see the trolls."


	10. The Trolls

**CW for violence against a child.**

* * *

The trolls were far away to the southeast. To reach them, Elsa rode in the contraption she always used to get up into the mountains so quickly, a sort of hanging seat suspended between two massive snowy spheres. It could handle any terrain with ease, but it wasn't built for two and looked desperately uncomfortable.

"Why don't I ride Blank?" Hans suggested quickly.

Elsa shrugged her assent, so Hans climbed up onto Blank as he'd done so many times before, perched between two of its spines. He pulled his cloak more tightly around him and nudged Blank with his knee.

The one thing Hans had never been able to appreciate before was just how _fast_ Blank could go. It didn't get much chance to stretch its legs in the castle, and Urgma would not allow Hans to ride it outside. But now it took off like a gust of wind; Elsa, in her odd conveyance, barely kept up. Hans, tired and still sun-sick, threw his head back and howled at the sky. The wind tore the voice from his throat and threw it away, and the stars streaked and flickered overhead.

The trolls lived in a steamy little gully that slithered with moss and algae. When they reached the mouth of the valley Elsa told Hans that Blank would have to wait outside.

"They don't like my creatures," she said. "They tried to melt Olaf once. I'm sorry, Blank. Wait here for us, and if you hear anything off— you'll know what to do." Blank, for once, didn't fight it, but paced back and forth at the trailhead and made no attempt to follow.

Then they had to scramble and climb up a scree-slope to where the trolls lived, well past the point where Blank's uneasy scrumbling had faded from their ears. Despite the walking stick he'd remembered to bring, Hans struggled. Elsa went behind him, to make sure he didn't fall out of sight.

Eventually they achieved a plateau filled with round boulders of varying sizes. Hans stood awkwardly, wondering if the boulders were the trolls, and if they were really real, and if they were really the good guys. Elsa certainly didn't talk about them like they were, but here she was, asking for their help.

The largest boulder blinked, and then the rest blinked, and suddenly every rock in the place was alive and staring.

"This is it?" said the largest one, whose topper of moss and leaves resembled a crown. His voice, like sand, had an immediate knack of working its way where it oughtn't, grating against Hans's eardrums.

"Pabbie, this is Hans," said Elsa levelly. She sounded cold and emotionless again. She needed these creatures— he still wasn't sure why— but she hated being near them.

Pabbie turned to Elsa. "You want to know if he's really cursed," he said.

"Please," said Elsa. "It's very important."

"Well, Hans," said Pabbie carelessly, "Let's have a look at you." Elsa gave him a nudge, and he stumbled forward. Was he supposed to kneel? Bow? Play dead? Pabbie reached up with one stony finger and pressed it, none too gently, to the center of Hans's forehead. Hans found his eyes watering and struggled not to blink. His head felt suddenly heavy and he thought of passing out, and then

* * *

He was on the deck of the _Nordlys_ , salt spray in his face, wind in his hair, and he was smiling.

* * *

He was in his father's private audience chamber, bowing low, while with one indifferent stroke of the pen his father stripped him of his ship and gave it to Caspar.

* * *

He was looking out over a glittering harbor as the _Nordlys_ weighed anchor and set sail under her new captain. "Two months since Caspar got your ship, and you've not smiled once," Lars was saying beside him. "Perhaps it's time you had a change of scene, and a new start. You were happy in the North."

"I was happy at sea," Hans corrected stiffly.

"You were happy with a _challenge_ ," Lars said. "I'm told the North is nothing if not challenging. The Queen of Arendelle is to be crowned in a six-month. We've not settled on an emissary, but it should be you. Go North. Feast at Arenby, learn their customs, drink their wines. Dance with a pretty girl. Maybe you'll find a lass who can make you happy."

"A wife will not solve my problems," Hans said. "When has marriage made anyone in this family happy?"

Lars cleared his throat, embarrassed. "Well, I...I know Helga was found for me from a list. No romance in it, I know that. But you cannot know what a wife can do for a husband, till you've tried. I'd not trade Helga for any number of ships, or benedictions from Father, or...or whatever it is you think you need to be happy. My Helga is steady and she's quiet. She suits me, and I think— I _hope_ I suit her, too. Seek you out a maid like that, and you'll find you miss your _Nordlys_ less and less."

Hans, abashed, looked his brother in the eye. Lars was clearly uncomfortable with the conversation, but he meant well. Perhaps he was even right.

"Aye," Hans agreed. "I'll try my luck in the North."

* * *

Hans was on the docks at Arenby, his third day in port, and a pretty girl with two red braids and a ready smile was telling him he was gorgeous. A lonely girl, with a childhood like his but a disposition much brighter. And she was eligible.

"You know, Sitron," he said to his horse after a comedy of flirtatious mishaps landed him in the bay, "she's rather nice. And I doubt she'll want to live in Kongenhaavn."

Sitron snorted, which Hans took for assent.

* * *

Hans was handing out blankets and coats, organizing the rationing of spring vegetables for soup, writing out charts and lists to make sense of the chaos that had descended on Arendelle with Elsa's sudden flight. It was a challenge— but Lars had been right, he _was_ happiest with a challenge, and it was meaningful work. Hans was busy and his mind was calm, free of its usual swarming anxieties.

Even when Anna's horse returned without her, he didn't panic. He worried, of course, but he also knew just what to do, what preparations to make, what tone to adopt to prevent the search party from getting out of hand. Later, in the mountains, he stood over Elsa's prone figure and fought off Weselton's men until Marshmallow arrived and frightened them away. He bundled her into his arms and carried her down the icy staircase, to where Sitron waited. Then he rode down the mountain to Arenby, with her head knocking gently against his shoulder all the way. When they arrived at the castle she was hauled into a cell, her hands encased in special manacles.

"The old King— her father— he ordered these made when she was a girl," whispered one of the staff. "I hoped I'd never live to see them used."

Hans knew better than to interfere, outsider as he was. But he did find a blanket to drape over the Queen before leaving to ask for news of Anna.

Then Anna was back, and Hans was bending to kiss her.

That was when it happened. "Oh, Anna," he said, his voice brittle and unnatural. Something gleamed in his eyes, brighter than the flames on the hearth, brighter than the candles on the mantel. Bright as earthfire, and as deadly. "If only there were someone out there who loved you."

" _There_ ," said Elsa, in a voice silky with rage. And the memory went dark.

* * *

Hans looked up at the trolls, who had begun to seem nervous, and then at Elsa. He nearly recoiled; she was livid.

But not at _him_.

"We didn't mean it like that," said Pabbie pleadingly. "We didn't mean it to take him so, it shouldn't have hurt a soul, we wouldn't hurt a soul, Your Majesty!"

"Garbage!" Elsa roared. "What did you do to him?"

"I don't understand," he said numbly. "What just…"

"You _were_ cursed," said Elsa, not taking her eyes from Pabbie's face. Her hands were raised, the fingers spread. Flakes of ice sparked from them like lightning.

"It was only meant to clear away the obstacle," said Pabbie. "When Kristoff brought the princess to us, we thought we might get him into the royal family. It's been generations since we've had an ambassador in Arenby, you can't blame us for trying— it's only natural we want to see what's going on in court! Only— only there was someone standing between them."

"So you bespelled the _obstacle_ to murder my sister— _why?_ "

"Murder, no!" wailed Pabbie. "Why would we do that? What would we want with a dead Princess? We only set a little spell, a nudge really, just to edge out the competition. I swear, that's all we did! It hit him wrong, it mixed badly with the curse he already had inside him."

This surprised Elsa into dropping her hands. "What?" she said quietly.

Pabbie smiled unpleasantly. "Oh yes, Your Majesty," he said, with such obvious relish that Hans suspected his previous panic of being an act. Pabbie was in full control of this situation, and knew it. "Didn't you know? That one is curses all the way down. I could see it a mile away. Stands out, rather. It's been in him some time. It curdled our spell and made him go all nasty. I don't know where it came from, but I know it's not one of ours. It's human."

"A _human_ cursed him?" exclaimed Elsa, shocked and horrified. But Hans was not terribly surprised at all; this was more a confirmation of a lifelong suspicion than actual _news_.

"Who did it?" he asked resignedly. "One of my brothers?"

Pabbie laughed, a sound like sand hissing through an hourglass. "Takes more than one human to get a curse of this scope to stick," he said. He was openly enjoying himself now. "Humans don't have the stones for it."

"Tell us who did this," Elsa said menacingly. "Tell us now, or I'll freeze your hot springs."

"Your Majesty, I—"

" _Tell us!_ " Elsa raised her hands again, and snow began to fill the air. Pabbie's eyes widened and he lost his jeering air.

"I can't!" blurted Pabbie. "But maybe he can tell you himself, with a little help." He stumped over to a perfectly round, very still pool of black water. Elsa took Hans firmly by the arm and followed, and the three of them knelt beside the mirror-like surface.

"Wait," said Hans, suddenly nervous, "what am I about to see?"

Pabbie only leered at him, and Elsa was waiting; and so he leaned over the pool and looked.

All around him the clearing froze as if time had stopped: nothing moved, not even the air. Elsa and Pabbie were still looking down at the pool, not blinking, not even breathing, nothing in the whole world was moving but Hans—

" — _Came early_ ," said a voice in the pool, a voice he knew.

His mother. Hans hunkered down at the edge of the water, careful not to disturb it, and stared through its surface at his mother's face. Looking down, he also seemed to be looking up. The lines of her were fuzzy and indistinct, and it was definitely her; but young, younger than he could remember seeing her in all his life.

"How early?" asked another voice, belonging to someone Hans could not see. The new one, he was certain, was his father.

"A month, or a few weeks," said the Queen. She sounded exhausted; her hair was plastered to her face and she looked ill.

"A few weeks. Thank the gods," said the King. "Then perhaps we have time."

"Time for what?" asked the Queen. "Jan? I cannot do this again. I don't think I can have another."

But her face was falling away, and another was replacing it: his father's, the King's, also young, full-bearded and in the prime of his manhood. The king looked at Hans, his eyes grave and noble. Hans began to cry, an infant's thin wail. The sound came from the mirror, but rose from inside him, too, erupting unbidden through his own mouth. Thick tears rolled down his cheeks that he was powerless to stop, and his father gazed up at him— or was it down? — from the pool.

"We must try," said the King. "Look at him, Risa, he's not what we were promised. We'll try again for a girl. You say he came too early, perhaps he won't count. It won't be any different from a stillbirth. Our thirteenth can still be the girl that was prophesied."

"Give him to me," said the Queen. "Let me hold him, please. One last time. Please, Jan?"

"Very well," said the King, and Hans was looking at his mother once more.

She seemed to be weeping.

Hans was cold, and he was wet, and he squirmed and flailed and the cold and wet just got _more_ , until it closed over his eyes and nose and throat, and he choked on it.

Hans tried to go on crying, but the water filled his throat and even the faces of his parents wobbled and flickered. He could not cry. He could not breathe. He tried to cough, tried to swallow, and his efforts strangled him. The water tasted faintly of soap.

They were trying to drown him.

Hans fell back, still kneeling in the warm damp clearing, shutting his eyes against the scene in the pool. But it blazed against his closed eyelids, it went on and on: his father holding him under the water, his mother letting it happen; the water rushing in, cold and impersonal and deadly.

 _It's not working_ , yelled a voice from far away— the Queen's?— _Get him up, he can't breathe, get him up!_

A mighty paw descended upon his chest, and he vomited a prodigious amount of water in Elsa's face. Stony mutters hovered around the edges of his consciousness, but a familiar snowy pile let out its most commanding growl, and they subsided. Blank settled on Hans's prone form and licked his face frantically, its tongue lashing like sleet against his swollen eyelids.

Elsa bent over him, unmoving. A queer, haunted gleam was in her eyes, and her mouth had fallen open a fraction. Her face and hair dripped onto Hans's shirt.

"They tried to—" Hans rasped, but the words burned in his throat and he could not finish.

"Don't say it," she whispered. "I saw."

"My mother always looked...ashamed," he said. It hurt so much to speak; his throat was on fire, but he had to say it, this final piece of the puzzle that had fallen into place. "I thought she was ashamed of me. But it was herself she was ashamed of."

"She _should be_ ," whispered Elsa. "She should be ashamed till the day she dies— long may she live! Hans, I never— did you _know?_ "

Hans shook his head and tried to sit up, and Elsa tried to help him; but Blank would not allow it, and he ended up with his head and neck propped up in her lap, and the rest of him completely hidden under Blank's bulk.

Somewhere out of sight, Pabbie hissed, "It's not _welcome here_."

"We'll go in a moment," said Elsa. "We came here for an answer, and we're not leaving without it. Do not forget who is Queen of this realm, and who holds the power to extinguish. Is Hans cursed?"

"You saw your answer," said Pabbie, petulant.

"Tell me true," cried Elsa, "in a straight line, without a slant to it! What is his curse?"

"You _saw_ ," repeated Pabbie. "Any harm a parent does willingly to their child is a curse, and will turn back on them; but to curse a thirteenth is a dangerous business, for it will multiply a thousandfold. It's been with him all his life, working in ways you'll never untangle."

"How do we break it?" Elsa asked, her voice shaking.

"Oh, same way you break any curse," said Pabbie mockingly. "It wasn't _our_ magic, though I know that's what you hoped. It was human magic. Humans do magic all the time, even when they don't mean to. Human magic is messy and ugly and _sideways_ ; it never comes out right. It went into him as a babe and it was still there when we gave him our nudge. That was all it took, a nudge, and he went cold as a killer, cruel as a corpse. Look at him— he can't even stand on his own feet! What does it matter if he's cursed, Majesty? He is what he is what he is, a speck, a wretch, a wreck. Now get— that thing— _OUT OF HERE_." Pabbie's displeasure, echoing and sour as iron, beat against Hans's already-pounding head until he thought he might vomit again.

The other boulders took up their leader's rumbling, and sparks of white and red fire began to fly where they ground against one another.

"Come on, both of you, we'd better go," whispered Elsa. Blank scooped Hans and Elsa both onto its back and loped back the way they'd come.

Not until it had reached high ground did Blank stop running. Hans, still too weak to support himself, had to rely on Elsa's strong arms to keep him from sliding off of Blank's back. But eventually they reached a place Blank deemed safe enough, and stopped beside a stream.

Elsa climbed down first and then helped Hans tumble gracelessly over Blank's side. "Have a drink," she said, quietly, kindly. "You must be parched."

Hans tried to laugh at this, but wound up coughing instead. Nearly drowning was an absurdly thirsty business. He could scarcely think around the aching of his head, could barely remember his own name. This hideous new knowledge of his parents might leave him, too, if he was lucky.

If he was lucky.

A mirthless laugh burst out of him, and turned into more, until he was choking on it, every laugh sending reverberations like cannonfire through his whole body. Everything hurt. "I always thought I had a curse on me, but I never thought I had _two_. I've thought about it and thought, ever since that day on the fjord it's _all I could think of_ , and it never made sense. I _know_ you can't marry into the throne. What would I want with a throne, anyway? I just wanted a wife who would look at me the way Anna looked at me. I liked her, and I wanted her to like me. That was all I wanted, until suddenly— it wasn't."

"I would have come around," said Elsa urgently. "I'm sure I would have, Hans, I would have come to like you."

"I wanted her, I _did_ ," said Hans, letting the frigid mountain water drip through his fingers. The sky was lightening in the east. "I wanted her, even if I didn't know what wanting was."

"Hans— "

"I would have been happy, perhaps. At least, I wouldn't have been unhappy. Maybe I could have even made _her_ happy, I don't know. That whole time you were in hiding, I didn't think of the throne. I never thought of the throne, never wanted it, in the south or here or anywhere. All I wanted was a ship of my own, and a family to come home to. Just a small one, somewhere far from Kongenhaavn. And then something went wrong inside me and I forgot everything I was and everything I wanted, and…"

"It was the curse," said Elsa. "I understand now, Hans, I do, I really do understand—"

"Pabbie's right," he muttered, "what does it matter about a curse? It doesn't matter why I did it. _I did it_ , and I am _so, so sorry_ , Elsa. I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry I hurt her." He found he was shivering with exhaustion.

"Hans."

One small, white-gloved hand came to rest tentatively on Hans's.

"I believe you," said Elsa. "I believe you, Hans." She pulled him to his feet. He could barely stagger upright, and his crutch was still back in the troll's clearing. He collapsed onto Blank's broad back and sprawled, while Elsa perched on its haunches.

"Elsa?" he mumbled, his eyes so heavy they couldn't be kept open for love or money.

"Yes, Hans?"

"I'm sorry I threw up on you."

"Go to sleep, Hans."

And he did, safe and spent between Elsa and Blank and the damp, pink dawn.


	11. Interim

When Hans woke, he noticed two things right away:

First, he had a _spectacular_ hangover.

And second, Elsa was in his room, sleeping bolt upright in a chair with her head thrown back and her mouth agape.

As usually happened when he was hung over, his first act was to review, to the best of his ability, the night before: had he said or done anything that he would relive and regret for the next ten years?

He'd...vomited on the Queen of Arendelle. He knew that much. He groaned and hid his face in his hands.

"Hans?"

The Queen was awake. Hans tried to sit up, but the room spun around him so he had to try it twice before it took.

"Hans, are you all right?"

"Yes," he said dully. He'd vomited on the Queen of Arendelle, and his parents had tried to—

Elsa wiped her mouth, straightened her bodice and come over to sit on the sliver of bed that Blank had left open.

"Really?" she said.

He'd vomited on the Queen of Arendelle, and his _mother_ had tried to—

"Is it true?" he asked, his voice flat and heavy. "Did the trolls...show the truth?"

"Yes," said Elsa evenly. "They are hateful, untrustworthy little bastards; they can get into your head and confuse you; they might even steal your memories, but they can't put new ones in. They don't know enough about human nature to invent. What they show you may be the worst memory of your life, but you can be sure it will be real. I'm sorry."

"Did the trolls give you the information you wanted?"

Elsa shrugged. "Yes, in a backwards sort of way. I wanted to know if you intend to betray me again."

"And?"

"We both know you don't," she said. She looked at him levelly. "I've wanted to believe in you for so long. I wanted so badly to trust you that I knew I couldn't. I needed you to meet them— needed you tired and sore, needed their power to worm in and weigh you down, so that you _couldn't_ keep a deception going. I never held out much hope of getting a straightforward answer from them." She could not meet his eyes. "I didn't know you would see...what you saw. I'm sorry."

"You had to do it," he said.

"I'm sorry anyway."

"Pabbie said...he said I could break it the same way you break any curse," said Hans. "But I don't know what that means."

Elsa looked at her hands. "You ought to remember," she said quietly. "It takes an act of true love."

"Ah." Now it was Hans who could not meet her eyes.

"Although," Elsa went on, "it should comfort you to know that no amount of kissing could have broken Anna's curse, even if you _had_ been in love with her. Magic doesn't respond to sentiment, it responds to sacrifice."

Hans fell silent, remembering the sacrifice that had saved Anna's— and Elsa's— life. He couldn't begin to imagine ever loving one of his brothers enough to throw himself under a sword for them, except for Lars. And the worst danger Lars ever faced was from a papercut, when he rifled too enthusiastically through the books in his library.

"Remember, Hans," said Elsa gently, "there is more than one kind of sacrifice. You already tried to trade your life for your people, and it didn't break the curse. I don't know what act of true love will save you from this, but I do know that spilling more of your blood is not the answer."

Hans was not sure he agreed with that assessment, but he lacked the energy to argue. He changed the subject. "How do you look so fresh, after a night like that?"

Elsa smiled grimly. "The trolls' magic and mine...don't get along very well. Their power doesn't affect me. I used to wish it would— used to wish they could take my power away from me. But they can't touch it, and they can't touch me, which is how I prefer it."

"You don't like them," observed Hans.

"I _don't_ like them. I need them, but I would be a fool to trust them. They only like people they can use."

"And...did they like me?"

Elsa grinned suddenly, showing teeth. "They _despised_ you."

"Well, if I never see those creeps again it'll be too soon," Hans answered. "It feels like I just got fucked by both ends of an oar." He was tired, and sore in every muscle, and his skin felt papery, and his head felt like it'd been filled with live beetles. He could not stop reliving what he'd seen, the nauseating taste of bathwater filling his sinuses, his mother's impotent pleas echoing in his ears.

"I can never un-know this," he said miserably. "I never even suspected. I knew they didn't want me, but there's a difference between being unwanted and being…"

"Hans, listen to me," said Elsa, and something hard in her voice made him look up. Her eyes were very wide and she seemed to be pleading with him. "They didn't want you; it's terrible and it hurts and nothing can change it. But that was their choice, their mistake. You don't have to forgive them for it, no one's asking you to. But it doesn't have to be all you ever are. They didn't think you were worth keeping around, fine. Find someone who does and don't look back."

* * *

Elsa did need his help. The more Hans learned of the state of her Navy, the more certain he became that it was in complete shambles. Urgma and Hans took a day to clear out a room near the solar and furnish it with a writing desk and supplies. That was where Hans took to spending all of his mornings and most of his afternoons. Blank would insinuate itself around Hans's feet and remind him to get up to urinate and feed himself, and gradual progress was made.

During one of her visits Elsa sighed, put down the chart she was studying, and dragged her fingers through her hair.

"It's dire, isn't it?" she said flatly.

"What's dire?" asked Hans cautiously.

"My navy. All that gold I'm sinking into it is just...sinking. Out of sight, out of mind. Who's taking it? Who's profiting?"

"Hard to say."

"Obviously you have some idea," said Elsa, consulting a sheet of paper. "You have lists and lists of officers associated with some egregious... _irregularities_."

"It looks that way," admitted Hans.

"Which means it _is_ that way," said Elsa angrily. "What do I do? Remove them from office?"

"You can't be sure what those irregularities mean," cautioned Hans.

"What else could they mean? So much gold has gone missing, what can it be but embezzlement?"

"In some cases, yes," agreed Hans. "But it could also be institutional malaise. Or inexperience, or low morale, or laziness, or bad luck, or simple inefficiency. There's a great deal to be learned from the numbers, your Majesty, but ultimately the numbers can only teach you where to look. Then you must look— with your own two eyes."

"My eyes wouldn't know what to look _for_ ," she muttered.

"Then you must find someone you trust, whose eyes are trained to see."

She peered at him oddly for a moment, and went back to her lists.

* * *

 **A/N: Late _and_ short, and I'm so sorry! It's only because the next chapter is like a million words long, with nowhere to put a break. Please forgive!**


	12. In Celebration

The visits grew slower as the days grew shorter, for Anna's wedding was drawing close and there was much to keep Elsa away. Then came a whole week when she did not come. Instead, she sent him a long, narrow package wrapped in brown paper which, when opened, revealed a fossiltree cane. The lustrous silver grain of the wood had been carved into a spiralling motif of ferns. The bone handle molded comfortably to the palm of his hand, and the shaft took only a little sanding to bring to the perfect height. Best of all was the note that accompanied the gift. It read, in Elsa's own hand, _Let the trolls keep your old crutch. This one will suit you better. -E_

Finally, at moonrise one night a week after the delivery of the cane, Blank scrabbled to its feet and bounded for the door in excitement, a sure sign that the Queen was imminent.

Hans, who had been in bed, rubbed his eyes and dragged himself out of bed and into his clothes. He presented himself, half-asleep, in the solar, and suddenly became _very much_ awake.

Elsa was standing in the middle of the room wearing a dress that had no earthly business in a ruin like this. Shimmering in shades of lemon, lavender and ice-green, with a low, clinging bodice and a skirt that undulated if you so much as looked at it, she was dressed like a woman who wanted something.

Hans found himself bowing, the untucked ends of his shirt flapping behind him, the hastily-pushed-up sleeves making him feel ridiculous.

"Hans, what are you doing?" she laughed. "Come here, I've rescued the best vintervijn from the reception."

The reception. The _wedding_. Of course.

"Urgma was dead to the world when I dropped off the latest charts in her room, and I didn't dare wake her to ask where she keeps the glasses. We'll quaff it like pirates, just us two." Her voice was giddy with suppressed excitement. Her breath tingled in his face, citrusy and cold.

"I'm game if you are," said Hans, helping himself to a swig. The vintervijn was very good, icy and bubbly and pale as moonlight.

"To the bride!" Elsa exclaimed.

"And the groom," Hans added, to be polite.

"Thank every god it isn't you," said Elsa, flopping in her usual seat furthest from the fire.

"I hear no lie," Hans admitted. He took a second, more generous sip.

"I've never been so relieved in my _life_ to have a thing be over, barring the insignificant exception of my imprisonment for ten years at the hands of my loving parents," said Elsa. "Weddings are a _nightmare_. Be glad you'll never have one."

"A hit, a very palpable hit."

"Did you ever want that...before?"

Hans took another swig. "I didn't give it much thought," he said. "Royal marriages are traditionally arranged by the parents in the Southern Isles, so hoping and wishing wouldn't have made much difference in any case. I always sort of hoped I would get lucky, like Lars."

"Tell me more about Lars."

"Well, he likes his wife."

"Go on."

Hans blinked, and sat down opposite Elsa. "There's no more to say. He likes her, that's all. They get along well enough, and if they fight they do it behind closed doors."

" _That's_ your highest aspiration?" Elsa leaned forward. Hans tried not to notice how the narrow straps of her dress pressed against the pale flesh of her biceps. "To _like_ her, and not to fight in public?"

"If I was lucky, yes. What else is there?" Hans drank again, realized he was hogging the booze, and passed it over to Elsa.

"Oh, I don't know," said Elsa sarcastically, "there's _love_ , and companionship, and shared interests, and...well."

"My parents didn't love each other," he observed without judgment. "My brothers and their wives, my cousins, my father's lieges... Every match of importance in the Southern Isles, as far back as our history tells, has been one of utility, not romance. My father's advice was always this: if romance is important to you, take care whoever you fall in love with comes equipped with a good military, or the gold to buy one."

"You needn't scoff so," said Elsa. "I can see you don't believe in love, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

"I believe in it," he answered shortly. "I only wish I didn't. Look at me, a disavowed thirteenth. I'd be better off as a bastard. I'm at your mercy for the rest of my life. Do _you_ feel like arranging a marriage for me? I can't imagine I'll fetch much on the open market, but perhaps you could place an ad: ' _On Offer: One Red-Haired Cripple, Menace To The Crown; Still Possesses Most Of Own Teeth And One Good Eye._ "

"You're hardly a menace _now_ ," Elsa laughed. Then, "What do you mean, one good eye?"

Hans squinted at her. "Souvenir from my nephew Pieter, along with the leg, although of course I owe the tattoo to my brother." He stroked absently at the raised scars on his stomach. Elsa's eyes followed the movement of his fingers. "They slathered my eyes in excrement from my very own bucket and it festered while I was busy making up my mind whether to live or die. It's nothing to fret about; I still have the other one."

"Which eye is it?" asked Elsa. "No, wait, don't tell me, I want to guess!" She rose and glided over to him, inspecting first one one side of his face, then the other. She was standing very close. Hans noticed that she had a small freckle, just one, dab in the center of her left cheek. Her eyelashes, under the soot-colored makeup she'd brushed onto them, were blonde.

"Mm," said Elsa, leaning closer. She took him by the beard and turned his face first this way, then that. Hans tried very, very hard not to stare at her cleavage, which was precisely eye-height and appealingly near.

"It's your left one, isn't it?" She released him and turned away to perch elegantly in her seat, feet demurely crossed at the ankles.

"Right on the first try," he applauded. "Is it that obvious? I knew sooner or later the ocular muscle would atrophy, but I'd hoped I had a little more time. Guess I'll start wearing a patch."

"It really isn't obvious," Elsa assured him. "It's not wandering yet, if that's what you're worried about."

"Then what gave it away?"

"Well," she said, taking a sip from the bottle, "your left eye was thinking about how many tons of ballast a ship needs per weight total, or whatever, and your right eye was thinking about looking down my dress. So I figured either lefty's the blind one, or I don't look _nearly_ as fetching as my mirror would have me believe."

"If your mirror had the view I did, it wouldn't have let you out of the house at all."

"Hah, Mr. Westergaard."

"And did your dress work?" he asked casually, leaning back. "Did you manage to hook anything more interesting than the one eyeball remaining to your landlocked political prisoner?"

"I don't need a dress for _that_ ," said Elsa. "A crown and a country and a mystical power over life and death seem to do the trick all on their own, funnily enough. It's been mentioned to me from more than one quarter that I'd make a mighty fine ally— 'scuse me, _wife_. The Southern Isles aren't the only country to prioritize matches based on utility _._ "

"Yes, the ability to cover an arctic wasteland in springtime will tend to draw the suitors. And have you fallen head over ankle for anyone or are we still in qualifying rounds?"

"Oh, it's _decades_ too soon to tell. I know I'll have to make a sensible marriage, but curse it all, I can't see myself marrying _any_ of them. Useful or not." Elsa rolled her eyes and threw her head back. Hans tried not to notice the pale length of her throat.

"Lars says love is bound to grow from the seeds of a joined life and a shared bed, if you but take the trouble of watering them. Does that not soften you to the prospect?"

"I'm sure your brother is not wrong," she conceded. "My parents' marriage was...if not arranged, then at least heavily encouraged, and I suppose they must have loved each other. Anyway, Anna says they did, and she would know. But still...is it so much to ask that I _start out_ with liking and fondness, if I can't start out with love? So far I've not cared a fishbone for any of them."

"What about the Duke of Vakretta?" he suggested. "He has a good head for trade, and he's said to be very learned. Good for conversation over dinner."

"The _Duke_ of _Vakretta_ doesn't know how to shut up, and if I thought I had to marry him I would drown myself in tomorrow's bath."

"All right, maybe not the Duke of Vakretta," Hans conceded. "You might try the Vicomte of Tureign. He controls the longest swath of coast south of the Isles. Could be a good ally."

"If I want someone for an ally, I'll send an request on the royal letterhead," said Elsa disdainfully. "Vicomte Michellangelo has a laugh like a schoolboy's nervous fart, and he laughs at _everything_. I couldn't bear to wake up next to _that_ for the rest of my life."

"The Prince of Edapest?"

" _That_ tow-headed lump of— "

"Not Adelbert," Hans corrected quickly, "the second one. Prince Jarich. He's fought in six wars. Probably knows a lot of stories."

"Fought in six wars and been injured in none," scoffed Elsa. "I don't trust a man who calls himself a soldier but wears not a single scar to lend credence to the claim."

"Ah." Hans took a long, thoughtful chug. "I confess, I had not looked at it that way. So if I've got this right, your ideal mate would be taciturn, melancholy, and covered in scars, is that it?"

"It'd be a start."

"Good luck with that, Your Majesty," he said, raising the bottle in a facetious toast. "It sounds to me like you desire the undesirable, but in that case perhaps your Consort will come cheap. I would advise you to marry whoever offers you the best dower, and keep a harem on the side."

"Oh, really. Would _you_ follow your own advice, were you in a position to?"

"Wouldn't I?" he responded without thinking. "If you want your hull repaired, go to a shipwright. Want your horse shod, go to a groom. Want your bed warmed, seek out an expert and pay her in gold."

Elsa let out a delighted gasp. " _Hans_ of the _South_ ern _Isl_ es _,"_ she crowed gleefully, "have you been in the habit of _paying?_ "

"Certainly," said Hans, and realized he was being laughed at. "Why? Don't you?"

Elsa chuckled. "I think I'd be noticed if I crept into Redtown. Tell me everything."

"Ah, you know how it is, when you've been at sea," he said, hesitating.

"How would I know such a thing?" she said. "Go on, I'm curious now."

"Well, say you've been at sea for three months," he said, warming to the subject. "All you've had to eat is the sort of thing that packs well or can be caught on the open ocean. First thing you'd want to do, soon as you get a chance, is buy a bowl of something hot and fresh, doesn't matter what."

"I can't tell if that's a euphemism or not," she said.

Hans shrugged. "It is and it isn't. Most bawdy-houses serve up more than one dish."

"I'm completely lost."

"Well, a sailor will put in to shore, take his pay, and make for whatever inn seems likely to satisfy the most of his urges. A bowl of stewed beets instead of salt codfish, wine instead of grog or sour ale, a straw tick instead of a hammock, a pretty wench instead of his own calloused hand. Most fellows know what they like and where they can find it. First night to land, they find it fast."

"You were a Prince of the Southern Isles," she pointed out. "Surely _you_ wouldn't settle for a straw tick and a bowl of beets."

"No, I wanted something much better. I wanted stories."

"Stories," Elsa repeated, one eyebrow lifted suggestively. " _Just_ stories?"

Hans, to his credit, didn't even blush. Perhaps it was the ordeal with the trolls that had softened them toward each other, or all their games of Fangensflukt, or that hers was the only friendly face he'd seen in a year. More likely it was just the vintervijn. They'd started their second bottle.

"Of course not just stories," he said. "Stories and a vigorous plunge, and maybe a neck rub for afters. But the stories were really the selling point."

"What sort of stories?"

"Whatever sort I couldn't get from my men. I liked epics and adventures, and myths pretending to be true, and the truth pretending to be myth. I liked stories that stuck with me and made me ponder. I liked a woman who knew just how to tell it, so you never wanted it to end, so you felt in a way it never _did_ end, but went on growing in your mind like a seed and sprouting little stories of its own. Yours about the maid who fucked a volcano would have had me begging at your feet till the end of leave."

Elsa giggled, a strangely young sound. "I never would have guessed it. I'd like to hear one of these marvelous tales you've heard."

"Someday I'll be glad to tell you one," he said, "but right now I can't do justice to more than a vile chantey or two, so I'm afraid you'll just have to wait."

"Then I'll have a vile chantey," she decided. Pursing her lips at his rising cry of dismay she said, "I insist! I told you the whole rambling history of Isloga and Hildis; you owe me."

"You truly don't want me to sing. The sorts of songs I know are not...for decent company."

"I'm tired of being decent, Hans. Sing! Your Queen commands it!"

 _You're not my Queen_ , Hans wanted to say, _you're my captor_. But he could not lie to himself. Not about that, of all things. "Only promise not to judge me too harshly," he said, giving in.

 _From Arendelle a cannon boat_

 _Set out upon a caper._

 _She was as good as minted gold_

 _But her Captain, he was paper._

 _The god of wind hated to see_

 _Such riches go to waste._

 _So he puckered up his godly cheeks_

 _And blew that Cap away._

"When we were on shore leave, we used to switch out the name of the country and sing it at foreign sailors to taunt them. Got my wrist broken once, for belting that at a pikeman from Valaan Saari. But none of us dared sing it at sea."

"Why not?" asked Elsa. "Didn't want to tempt the god of wind?"

"Didn't want to tempt a nervous captain," said Hans. "' _A gold ship with a paper captain'—_ that's what we used to call a ship too good for her command. And that comes a step too close to mutiny, for some. Mutiny carries the heaviest punishment in the Southern Isles, heavier than treason. Traitors are merely hung. A mutineer will be eaten alive by rats."

"How _horrible_ ," shivered Elsa. "Tell me more."

Hans laughed. "I don't think you're offended at all, Your Majesty."

"Try harder," she suggested.

So he sang:

" _There be no time for ease aboard a ship;_

 _the Cap'n will not tolerate no lip._

 _And if ye dip into his liquor stash,_

 _You're sure to feel the wrong end of his lash._

 _The portly life it tells a different tale,_

 _where streets abound wi' Janeys broad and hale._

 _But have a care wherein ye sink yer oar,_

 _or John'll see ye never row it more."_

Elsa seemed to like it. "But it's hardly vulgar at all," she said. "Certain promises were made, Hans. Your reputation as a peddler of base filth is beginning to look precarious."

Hans laughed. "All right," he agreed, "here's one I picked up in the slums of Borgia. Settle in, for it's an epic."

" _A-walking in the town one night_

 _I was followed by a thief._

 _A bully with a pocked red nose,_

 _a gorse-bush grew beneath._

 _So quick as lightning I made tracks_

 _to flee his greedy claw._

 _I'd barely started to relax_

 _when a sweet-faced lass I saw._

" _O sir, where do you go?" she asked,_

 _while leaning out her window._

 _I answered, "I'm a-running, lass,_

 _because I'm being followed."_

" _You'd better catch your breath," she said,_

" _and I'll pour you an ale."_

 _Then Sally, of the hair so red,_

 _asked me to tell my tale._

 _Flattered I was by her request_

 _and gladly I complied._

 _But Sally seemed to lose interest_

 _and soon led me inside._

 _She lit a candle, pulled the blind,_

 _and tugged my Johnson free._

" _Aha!" she cried, "Now that's the kind_

 _of tail I like to see!"_

 _Oh how I blushed as pink as beets,_

 _this lad of tender years._

 _But Sally fell upon her knees_

 _and calmed my youthful fears._

" _Just seat yourself right there," she said,_

" _And I'll sing you a song."_

 _She sang so well that soon I begged,_

" _Oh don't make it too long!"_

" _It isn't short, this song I tell,"_

 _she mumbled round my oar._

" _But worry not, I'll sing it well—_

 _I've sung it oft before."_

 _She deftly rowed that oar of mine,_

 _she dipped it out and in,_

 _until it overflowed with brine_

 _that dribbled down her chin._

" _Ah! Marry me!" I loudly cried,_

" _You have me in your power!"_

" _You'll find in me a costly bride,_

 _for I charge by the hour."_

" _I'll pay in love," I promised her,_

" _and a cottage by the sea._

 _We'll be a happy couple, dear,_

 _if you'll come live with me."_

 _But at my words a cudgel flashed_

 _and bashed me in the eye._

 _Not Sally but old John Moustache,_

 _who'd crept in on the sly._

 _He'd snuck in through the window_

 _for to oversee our play;_

 _and now I drew no coin to show,_

 _he meant to make me pay._

" _Ten coppers for my Sally's lips,_

 _ten more to ice her knees,_

 _another ten to wipe those drips_

 _you've left upon her cheeks."_

" _I have not thirty coins!" I said,_

" _I have not even five!"_

" _Then you will pay in blood, my friend!"_

 _He raised his bludgeon high._

 _Now fearing for my life and limb_

 _cornered by this big lout,_

 _I eyed the window he'd come in_

 _and broke it jumping out._

 _The glazing cut me as I fell_

 _but I did not delay;_

 _I hit the ground and ran like hell_

 _hotfooting for the quay._

 _Big Johnny was not far behind,_

 _a-braying like an ass._

 _I boarded the first tub I spied_

 _and prayed it cast off fast._

 _The captain of that leaky rig_

 _he listened to my tale_

 _and offered me a swabber's gig_

 _as soon as we set sail._

 _And that is all the tale of what_

 _made this man an enlister._

 _the Sea's a brutal mistress but_

 _at least she has no mister."_

Elsa was laughing heartily by the end. "Who taught you that one?" she asked. "It's quite grand enough for the halls of ancient Schune."

She was mocking him, but kindly, and Hans answered honestly. "I learned most songs from crewmates. Some of them are old, and some we made up to pass the long night hours on the Skalding. You get that many young men together and toss them about in a ship for six months, there's one topic they'll find their way round to again and again. 'Course, I joined up when I was fourteen. I was a lonely, sheltered kid. I was as shocked at the way sailors talk as you, most likely."

"Only fourteen," mused Elsa. "It seems so young to go out on your own."

"For royalty I'd call it average, though cabin-boys were usually younger. I started at the bottom, or close to it. That was the only way to learn everything I needed to learn. My first posting was the _Gale's Chance_. I learned how to do all the basic things, all the knots to tie and how to rig the sails for different conditions. How to weatherproof a deck, that sort of thing. At first people distrusted me because I was high-born, and the thirteenth son, but when they saw I only wanted to learn they didn't mind me so much.

"By seventeen I was first mate on the _Chance_. My shipmates were my only friends, the only people I gave a damn about. It gets like that aboard ship; you're only as good as what you can do, and no better. I worked hard and I didn't ask for special treatment, so they forgave me for being a Prince. I begged my father for a ship of my own. There were some things about the way the _Chance_ was run that I didn't like, and I suppose I thought I could do better."

"And he let you?" asked Elsa.

"...Eventually," said Hans, looking away. "Mostly it came down to money. My father knew I could be a good investment and a cheap one. The only crew he allowed me was the scraping of the barrel, though that turned out for the best, in the end. We got the most grueling missions clearing the Skalding Sea. Pirates use the Skalding Sea as sort of a highway; natural conditions conspire to make it incredibly difficult to patrol effectively. I presume my father hoped this would get me out of his hair; if I could turn myself to good account, so much the better."

"What was the first ship you captained?" asked Elsa.

Hans felt his face relaxing into a smile as the name rolled over his tongue. "The _Nordlys_. Things aboard that old broad were...comically bad, at first. My crew was mainly criminals condemned to transportation, mostly for theft of Crown property. You've got to understand, though, that nearly everything in the Southern Isles is Crown property. The Krone Trading Company is the source of most of the country's livelihood. The Krone has its fingers in any trade that crosses open water, which is just about all of it since the Southern Isles are, well, _isles_. And of course…"

"The Crown owns the Company," finished Elsa.

"Precisely. Most of my crew were thieves, runaways, tract-breakers. A few sodomites. A cabin boy who had impersonated a nun. That sort of thing. Most of them untrained in any but the most basic of seafaring skills. But my first mate, Georg, had been with me on the _Chance_ , and together we turned that floating pile of brigands into something of substance. There's a certain kind of valor in a crew of people who've already been to the bottom; they see things more clearly than the well-fed sons of merchants and tradesmen. They were willing to put up with conditions I doubt my brother's polished comrades aboard the _Wind's Mistress_ would ever tolerate.

"After the first year, I was promoted to Admiral, and another ship, the _Flighty_ , was placed under my command. Together we made the Skalding Sea as impassable to pirates as these mountains are to a shrimp. Conditions were stark, and often violent. But I loved the men who served under me, and I was happy."

"It's too bad you didn't stay at sea," said Elsa quietly.

"Yes," agreed Hans. He could not think about it without pain. "I took a tub full of criminals and turned it into a floating wall for pirates to bash their brains against. So my father took the _Nordlys_ and gave it to my brother Caspar, who had recently lost his own ship in a squall just off Edapest."

"He _didn't_ ," groaned Elsa.

"Don't act surprised," said Hans bitterly. "There I was, twenty-three, an Admiral without a ship, land-bound and directionless, back in the bosom of my loving family. I'm afraid you met me at an ugly time in my life."

"So I'm beginning to suspect," said Elsa. "Drink more. And for heaven's sake think of something cheerful. I'm still in a celebratory mood. Do you have any more songs? Do you think you could teach me one?"

"The easiest to learn are also the dirtiest. You quite sure you want to expose your royal ears to that kind of filth?"

"I insist."

"All right," said Hans, grinning.

" _Though lonely the seafaring feller,_

 _when I was a salty ship-dweller_

 _I loved a young clam,_

 _my bivalve Madam;_

 _all I wanted to do was to shell her._

 _The sun would have set in the east_

 _before my appetite ever ceased._

 _For hours her flavor_

 _I gladly would savor;_

 _one small taste of her was a feast._

 _Alas that our love couldn't last!_

 _Too soon were our happy hours past._

 _A storm blew up hard,_

 _the ship fell apart,_

 _and I crushed her to death with my mast."_

Elsa had an excellent ear for harmony, and picked up the words in just one or two repetitions. Her singing voice was sharp-edged and penetrating, suiting her personality to a drop. They sang it imperfectly a few times then managed one flawless rendition, and both burst into excited applause at their achievement.

"That one I didn't learn from my comrades," said Hans, "but from…" He paused, trying to weigh in his mind just how much he was going to regret this evening when he woke hungover.

But Elsa insisted. "Oh, go on, do tell," she said, her eyes sparkling. "I can guess, anyway, from how red your face is. You match your hair."

Laughing good-naturedly, Hans complied. "Aye," he said, "you're not wrong. The finest whore in Cloudcove taught me it." He allowed himself a small moment to regret that wine always made him expansive and nostalgic, and went on. "Her name was Mylenna. Bright as a minted coin she was, and clever. She knew the best stories and the best songs."

"I think you must have been in love with her," teased Elsa.

"Not in love, no," said Hans, quickly. Then (why not admit it?), "Maybe I was. A little. I was a lonely boy and she talked to me like I was a man. Took my cherry and everything, and a fellow doesn't easily forget the woman who does _that_. Must have been ten years ago, for I'd barely turned sixteen. I thought I was so high and mighty, too. I was sure I'd never climb into a whore's bed, thought it was beneath my dignity. Well, I can tell you, in every way but birth Mylenna was my superior. Eleven years up, wise as a serpent, witty and charming. She read seven languages and spoke eight, and knew drinking songs in every last one."

"Beautiful, too, I suppose?"

Hans considered. "We-ell," he said after a moment's thought, "not exactly beautiful, no. Not in the way you might see painted and hung on a wall. In truth she was mousy, haretoothed and pigeon-toed. Swains would sing that her eyes were like the grey of the sea before a storm, but have you ever _seen_ the sea before a storm? It's nothing to write home about, murky and dull. No, I'd not say she was beautiful, but she dressed herself like she was. Knew how to set off her assets, such as they were. And when she talked to you— _if_ she decided to talk to you, if you were one of the lucky few admitted through the hidden door and up the winding stairs to her private chamber— if you got that far, you started to think nothing could be more beautiful than dishwater eyes and an overbite."

"She must have been quite a talker," said Elsa drily.

Hans chuckled. "Among other things," he said. "And that's what counts, in the end. It's not a woman's quim men long for, when they're trapped in a tub on the Skalding. Maybe that's how we say it to ourselves and in our songs: we talk around what we really want, we wrap it up in vulgarity and jest, to keep the edges of it from hurting us. And sure, first night back on land, a thirsty sailor will dip his piggin anywhere and not care where. But what we want, mostly, is a woman's laughter, and her jokes, and her songs. The sounds she makes when she's finally taught you to do what she likes, and the little kiss she leaves on your cheek when she leaves, to let you know she didn't mind sharing your company for an hour."

"You _were_ in love with her," said Elsa again, half wistful this time.

"She was good to me, and I was in awe of her. My heart didn't break when she married and bid me a last farewell, so it can't have been a very _deep_ sort of love; but I think of her from time to time, and hope she's happy, and wish her well."

"If it's not deep," said Elsa thoughtfully, "is it truly love? How can a person even tell?" She sipped her champagne pensively. "I spent half my life believing love was for other people, that it was a thing to give, perhaps, but not to receive. That it's a virtuous thing, a duty and a penance. I am trying to unbelieve it now, because Anna swears it is not true. And I _do_ believe her— to a point. I believe that she loves me, as I love her. One person in all the world loves me in any way more concrete than the abstract love of a people for their Queen. One person, just one. And the worst of it is, I cannot tell if that number is high or low."

"You are asking the wrong person," he said, heart clenching. "But Anna is not the only person who loves you. I...I'm certain of it."

"Well, what would you know about it?" she said— not cruelly, but with finality. "What would either of us know?"

Hans looked over at her; but she had averted her face from the flickering hearthfire, and he could not read her eyes.

"I know a little," he said quietly. "I know it hurts like the touch of honed steel, hurts so that you feel it in all your body. And you feel it all the time. You think, _I must finish mending these sails, and I love her. I'm late for dinner, and I love her. Blank is in a mood again, and I love her_. Only you're thinking it without words, because there _aren't_ words. Maybe if there were it would hurt less."

Elsa was looking at him queerly. "You didn't feel that about Mylenna," she said quietly, "or about Anna either. When have you—?"

"Well, that's how the songs make it seem," he mumbled. He should not have drunk so much; it was making him say things that were better told only to the blanket thing, or to no one.

"Not the songs I've heard," said Elsa. "I don't think it's supposed to hurt."

"Well, the ones _I've_ heard, then. At any rate, it doesn't matter. They're just songs. Likely I took them too serious; Lars always said I think too much on things, which coming from him means something." His voice was unsteady. He hoped she couldn't tell.

"Sing me one."

"Another chantey?"

"A love song."

"Perhaps we've had enough singing for one night," he said. "Perhaps Your Majesty would care for a game of—"

"Hans." She bit her lip, her cheeks stained faintly pink. "Please?"

Hans, unable to refuse her even at the risk of giving himself away, sang:

" _She could never be more than alone._

 _She was the ocean, or so she seemed to be._

 _She wanted nothing more than to be known;_

 _but who is big enough to hold the sea?_

 _She was the ocean: so, to her, it seemed._

 _Into herself she took ten thousand loves._

 _But none were big enough to hold the sea,_

 _The depths of her so wide and wild and rough._

 _Into herself she took ten thousand loves,_

 _Of shell and fin and gill and scale and leaf._

 _They lived inside her, wide and wild and rough,_

 _And she was all they ate and drank and breathed._

 _With shell and fin and gill and scale and leaf,_

 _They could not know how she was set apart_

 _All they could do was eat and drink and breathe._

 _They could not scry the mystery of her heart._

 _Not one could see how she was set apart._

 _Engulfed by her, too close to understand,_

 _They noticed not the hollow of her heart,_

 _Or how she beat her fists upon the sand._

 _But one outside her, close enough to stand_

 _In fingertips of waves she vainly spent—_

 _With human eyes watched her abuse the sand_

 _With human heart knew what her hurting meant._

 _In fingertips of waves she vainly spent_

 _He wanted nothing more than to abide,_

 _Because he knew just what her hurting meant;_

 _And he would not be happy till he tried._

 _Inside her surf he longed ever to bide;_

 _To know her, as her lowest creature knew._

 _And he could not be happy till he tried,_

 _Though he should perish in her livid blue._

 _Longing to know her, as her creatures knew,_

 _He plunged into her, recklessly and deep._

 _She felt him founder in her livid blue;_

 _The ocean, hot and fast, began to weep._

 _He sank into her, recklessly and deep,_

 _His body cooling, blank and white his eye._

 _The ocean, hot and fast, began to weep:_

 _The only one who loved her had to die._

 _His body cold, vacantly white his eye._

 _By him she had been wanted and been known_

 _By knowing her and wanting did he die,_

 _and she would never be more than alone."_

The singing of it took time. It was not the sort of song one sang sitting down, so he stood leaning on his cane. He found he could not both look at Elsa and remember the words, and so he looked instead out the window, across the sleeping mountains.

When he finished, and thought he could bear to look at her again, she was standing beside him. She was so lovely, with a paleness that seemed to glow most brightly in the shadows and a scent like the mountain wind. It made Hans feel clean just to be near her.

She rested her fingers on the hand that held the cane. She had taken off her gloves, and her touch was warm.

"Hans…" she whispered, her face turned up to his.

"Your Majesty, I—"

"I wish you would stop calling me that," she said. "I wish…"

But he did not find out what she wished, because he bent his head to hers and kissed her lips.

 _This is not decent; you must not do this_ , his mind screamed at him, but for once he found his thoughts easy to ignore.

Against every odd she was kissing him back, eagerly but unsure. He realized: _This is her first kiss, it is not meant for you_ , but resolutely ignored that too. Her lips, still chilled from the cold wine, warmed to his quickly. One hand settled comfortably at his nape, the other became entangled in a fistful of his linen shirt.

When she shyly parted her lips for him, he nearly lost his grip on his cane. She tasted of winterwine poured over snow; she tasted like a sunrise. He wanted to taste her, _more_ of her, and broke from her mouth to trail kisses down her slender white throat. She moaned, the sound of it humming gently against his lips, and pressed herself closer to him. His hand curved around her small waist, slid upward to cup the panting fullness of her breast.

"Please—" she gasped, and then—

A pointed, wet, and _very_ cold nose was thrust between them at precisely loin-height: Blank, its saber-toothed maw grinning almost like a human, peered up gleefully from one to the other. Hans and Elsa sprang guiltily apart, like they'd just been caught in wrongdoing.

"Blank!" Elsa yelped, her face burning pink. "I—" She shot Hans a look of such heart-stopping confusion that he choked on whatever he might have said. Then she turned and hurried wordlessly from the room, and Hans was left alone with Blank.

In that moment all of the thoughts he had kept at bay for the last five minutes swarmed violently into the light.

At the fore was: _Oh gods, she'll hang you for treason_.

* * *

 **A/N: Thanks for waiting, friends! Fun fact, making a move on a female royal out of wedlock actually _was_ considered treason in various monarchies over the years, because of inheritance laws. Hans should know that's not an issue in Arendelle, which follows absolute- instead of male-preference primogeniture. However, Hans is not thinking with his upstairs brain right now and can be forgiven his confusion.**


	13. Reprieve

Hans walked through the busy common-room, untouched by the sea of faces and voices around him.

"M'lord?" said one pretty lass, touching his bicep with soft fingers. She was joined by another, then another, but he ignored them all: only one face did he desire to see tonight. She would be through this hidden door, here, and up these winding stairs—

The stairs wound up and up, till the strain in his breeches was nearly matched by the strain in his legs. But it was worth it, it would be worth it, as soon as he saw her face.

The stairs let out on the familiar chamber, small and private, velvet curtains fluttering over its windows and its candles lit. She always lit the place up like Yuletide when he came, for she knew it pleased him. Food and drink were laid out, too, and fresh linens on the bed. Pink roses, scattered over every surface, sweetened the air. The heat from the fireplace was too much for his coat and waistcoat, so he shrugged out of them. It really was almost _too_ warm; the dry heat was making him thirsty enough to down a pint of ale in one gulp. And where was—

"Mylenna," he said happily. Mylenna, freshly bathed, her brown hair curling elegantly on her shoulder, took his hands in hers, went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, smiling mischievously. Hans bent forward but she turned from his kiss, laughing, pushing him away with one hand.

"Oh, Hans," she said wryly, "we both know you're not here for me."

The draft coming through the curtain was colder now, and strong enough to set the heavy velvet to flapping. Annoyed at the interruption, Hans moved to close the window, but the draft had grown to a gale now, howling into the room and blowing out the fire. Hail pelted his face and melted down the back of his shirt; he suddenly missed his coat.

"Mylenna, help me with this—" He turned back to the room, but Mylenna was gone. The room was gone. Everything was gone but the wind, and the snow, and the biting cold. His teeth started chattering and he curled his arms over his chest, desperate to conserve heat. He felt the chill in his bones, in his eyeballs, in his hair. He felt it in his groin, aching and desperate. It surged through him till he thought he might die from it, he _wanted_ to die from it, wanted to bury himself in it and die a thousand times—

"On your knees," said a voice that was both quieter and louder than the storm. Hans, obeying, looked up, and the person before him both was and wasn't the Queen. She was a glacier, and she was Elsa; she was a frozen river, and she was Elsa; she was a mountain, and a stream, and a crystalline sunrise, and she was Elsa.

She was an icicle melting in the sun, and he was _thirsty_.

Her ungloved fingers tangled in his hair and brought his face between her legs, and finally he drank.

He drank her and his thirst only grew; her arctic wetness trickled down his throat and her hands melted against the back of his neck and her panting breath misted on his hair. He was colder than he'd ever been in his life, but somehow it no longer caused him pain. Her voice wavered and crashed over him. She was crying out his name—

" _Mr. Westergaard!"_

Hans shot bolt upright, so fast the world spun dizzily around him, and vomited over the side of the bed.

"You can clean that up yourself," announced Urgma acidly. "It's past noon, and Her Majesty left a whole new stack of charts for you to peruse, _if_ you'll be so kind." She spun on her wooden heel and left.

Hans looked down at the mess he'd made on the floor. How much had he drunk last night? Not much— they'd split two bottles of vintervijn between them but not finished the second. Then again, it had been strong wine, and they'd eaten not a bite, and then they'd— they'd—

Hans threw up again.

Blank blinked at him impassively from across the room. His head was pounding, his throat was dry as a tundra, his whole body ached, and he was probably so dizzy because all the blood had left his head for the traitorous tentpole under his bedclothes.

He flopped back down on the bed and yanked the sheets above his head. The liberties he'd taken with her— the things he'd said— the things he'd _fondled_ —

Gods above, she would have him executed, he was going to die, probably soon, but how soon? Would she do it herself? Send soldiers? Were they on their way now? _What if they showed up before his shamepole went down?_

Groaning, loathing himself every second, Hans saw to it that at least he would die with his dignity intact. Then, since no one had arrived yet for his head, he figured he might as well get a start on the documents she'd left him. If he worked up these charts now maybe he'd have time to go bed a boulder in the lake before sundown. With any luck, his body would never be found.

* * *

Hans threw himself into his charts like never before, but Elsa did not come for them. When his charts were checked and double- and triple-checked, he hobbled around on his new stick, stronger and faster with every shortening day. The air on the mountain grew cooler and the sun-sickness broke, and Hans knew by the track he kept scratched into his stony bedroom wall that it was the middle of August now.

And still she did not appear.

One morning, he woke to find a new stack of charts, new columns of revised numbers, new lists of names: Elsa had come, left Urgma with new documents, and gone without seeing Hans.

She must be furious with him, so furious that she would never admit him to her presence again. She was not the only one furious with him, either. If he forsook vigilance over his thoughts for even a moment, he began to spiral down into a sinkhole of shame. He was no use to Elsa like that, and during the days he managed to keep his thoughts on his work. But at night he had no relief, and would lie in silent agony for hours, reliving his sins, from last to first and back again.

 _Elsa. Anna. Surrendering Nordlys to Caspar, after all I did to win her. All I did to win her: the tax collection, the evictions, the seizures of property. Surviving infancy. Being born. Surviving. Serving my father. Surrendering my ship. Anna. Elsa. Elsa. Elsa._

And still, _still_ she did not come.

But finally, someone else did.

* * *

It was an early evening in September. Hans had completed three more rounds of charts for the Queen, who had not in all that time brought them in person. When Blank lifted its head and sniffed the air, its eyes bright with curiosity (and a little outrage, at its nap having been disturbed) Hans knew that someone was coming for him at last. Her headsman, perhaps, to kill him here and now. Or a guard to escort him to a more public death.

Or…

" _Lars?_ "

His elder brother stood in the doorway to his study, a single guard behind him. But the guard's sword was not drawn, he wore no armor, and when Lars closed the door on him he made no demur.

"Hans," said his brother gravely, clasping Hans's hand in his and throwing one arm briefly around his shoulders. All Hans could do was gape, so long had it been since he'd seen a face other than Urgma's or Elsa's. "I would not have known you, brother. You look well."

Hans fell back, breaking the hug. "You are mistaken," he muttered. It was not like Lars to make empty compliments, which he considered no better than lies. Hans did not look well, he knew: the tone had come back to his muscles hard and wiry, not lithe as in his youth, and the scars and the beard and the limp grizzled him.

"No mistake," said Lars. "You look better than I've seen you in many and many a year. As well as when we met at Vakretta— do you remember?"

 _Of course I remember. I showed you the Nordlys, and then we dined with Mylenna. You never even suspected she was a whore. You treated her like a grand lady, which amused her no end. When you boarded your ship back to Kongenhaavn, and I boarded mine for the North, you took my hand and told me you were glad I had found a place at last. The next time we met, she was Caspar's._

"So much has happened," said Hans, loath to dwell on a past that could never be righted. "Why are you here?"

"Helga is on her way to Blavenia with the children. Arendelle was not so far out of the way, and I had heard that you were being held here, so I made a detour."

"Why Blavenia?" asked Hans. "There's nothing there but wheat farms and goats."

"So maybe it will be safe from our brother's wandering eye," said Lars darkly. "Plots have grown up in our family like mushrooms. Caleb plots to invade Arendelle; Jens plots to overthrow Caleb; one brother supports this one and another supports that, Pieter plots daily to find a new kitten to cut open, and on and on and on. It sickens me. We were supposed to be a _family_."

Hans let out a sharp, cynical laugh. "You were fooling yourself," he said.

Lars sighed and sank into a chair near Hans's desk. "You've said it and said it, but not all families are like this. Ours didn't used to be. It was only when—"

"When I was born, I know," said Hans wearily.

"When Pieter began to show himself," Lars corrected. "For some years now, many of our brothers have favored Jens over Caleb, although he's the second. Caleb has only grown more vindictive since our Father's passing, and Pieter..."

Hans heard Pieter's young voice singing _I must go to the forest and find a stout stick, and stomp it and stomp it and stomp till it_ _cracks_ _._ His fingers tightened involuntarily on the bone handle of the cane Elsa had given him. Pieter was vile enough as a princeling; what would he be when he was crowned King, in fifty years or twenty or five?

"I mislike all this scheming," Lars said, "and it turns my stomach to see brother go against brother in secret. But I cannot be sure that they are wrong. Pieter's cruelty will devastate our country, if Caleb's pride and warmongering do not bankrupt it first, and of even that much I am far from hopeful. Jens and his sons are steadier, more like Father, and in my heart of hearts— but it is not in me to act on their behalf if so doing means betraying the rightful heir. So we have decided to leave, for a time, perhaps forever; it will depend on how this goes. Helga is a cousin of the Prince of Blavenia. We will live there as long as we must, to be safe."

"I'm not sorry to be well out of it," Hans said morosely. "I miss our brothers not at all, Lars." He chewed thoughtfully at his lip for a moment before saying, "I was desperate for a place in our father's heart, but now... I would rather be Queen Elsa's eternal prisoner than spend one more day as a Prince of the Southern Isles."

"It is a beautiful prison, to be sure," said Lars, looking around the airy and well-appointed chamber. "But it is not your birthright, Hans. Do you not miss your freedom?"

"How can I miss what I never had?" Hans asked. "I was Caleb's hostage before I was El— the Queen's. I was Father's hostage before that. The only time I ever felt free was on the _Nordlys—_ and what a false freedom that turned out to be, that could be taken from me with a piece of paper. No, Lars, I am as free now as I've ever been. At least my present captor is merciful, and has never once asked me to do a thing that was not honorable. Can our dear Father say the same, may he rest in peace?"

"He should not have made you his tax collector," Lars admitted. "It was beneath you—"

"It was not beneath _me_ ," Hans said. "It was beneath _honor_ ; it was beneath the people we are meant to serve. He did not want to hear excuses, he always said. ' _Get_ _to the point, Hans, just get to the point_.' Did I have what was owed the Crown, or didn't I? He didn't care to hear about bad hauls or blighted schools of fish or sunken merchant ships, and I didn't want to disappoint him. The money had to come from somewhere— and it did. It always did. And still I did not please him. Still he wished me un-born. So what, in the end, was the point?"

"I am sure our father did not wish you un-born— " Lars began, but Hans cut him off.

"He wished it," said Hans flatly, "as often as he thought of me at all. A child feels when he is not wanted, even if he cannot name the feeling until he is grown. It doesn't matter, anyway. What difference can it possibly make now? I am not a part of that family anymore, Lars. I'm no more a Prince than this snow thing here." Lars looked in confusion over at Blank, who was currently impersonating a snow mound in the corner, then back at Hans. He looked for a moment like he feared for Hans's mind, but pushed past it.

"You're part of _my_ family," he said. "If you're allowed pen and paper—" He gestured at the desktop still strewn with the morning's work. "—Then surely you can write to your crotchety older brother now and again."

"Only if my crotchety older brother will write back," Hans said with a sudden grin. One brother who liked him was far more manageable than eleven who didn't.

"And perhaps you might visit us in Blavenia, when we're more settled," Lars went on. "Helga has worried about you."

"Er, I'm not likely to leave this fortress any time soon," said Hans awkwardly. "I'm not exactly in Her Majesty's good graces at the moment…"

"Oh?" said Lars. "She seemed most interested in knowing how best to use you outside this fortress, when I talked to her last night. She sent you this." He presented a document to Hans, sealed with the Queen's own device.

Addressed to Hans Westergaard, Prince of the Southern Isles, the document was a partial clemency, a lifting of his lifelong ban from Arendelle, and a summons to the palace.

"She asked that you bring whatever you're working on. She sent a guard to accompany us back down the mountain. It's near a day's journey and the sun is already up. We'll eat and rest. You can finish whatever you're working on, and we'll be off at first light. And on our way, you will have to explain to me how exactly you came to be here, when you were supposed to be fleeing to _safety_."

* * *

Hans hunkered between Lars and Urgma, in a carriage being pulled down the mountain by four stout horses. On another horse rode the guard who'd arrived with Lars, who Hans had discovered was a nephew of Urgma's. Clearly a beloved one, for she'd bestowed on him an uncharacteristically warm nod of wordless approval before ignoring him all evening to make her preparations for departure. Seen closer, Hans realized the man was not a palace guard but a low-ranking naval officer. Why he had been sent up a mountain was anyone's guess.

And now they were barrelling back down the mountain toward Arenby, whence Hans was summoned. Blank, of course, slithered smoothly along with them, sometimes behind, sometimes ahead, never out of hearing of its human. Hans had wanted to ride Blank, though he understood why that could not be permitted. Urgma's nephew— to say nothing of Lars— had not wanted to allow Blank along at all.

Urgma had suggested, in a particularly stony voice, "Try making it stay." The nephew had looked at Blank, looked at Urgma, shrugged and proceeded to pretend it didn't exist. _Nephew by blood, not by marriage_ , Hans decided when he saw that.

By evenfall they were trundling through the streets of Arenby, passing under the gates, drawing up to a small side entrance. Hans felt himself shrinking into his furs, wishing to shrink small enough to disappear. He'd not been near so many people in well over a year. Every time a passerby saw Blank and shrieked, he gripped his cane harder. By the time they were alighting from their ride, his hand was frozen white around the pale smooth handle of the cane. But when Blank interposed itself between him and the guard, and nipped his cane hand gently with its saberteeth, he felt a little better. Anyway, no one was pelting him with tomatoes. That was something.

Nephew led him (and Blank) to a chamber with a bed, a steaming tub, and no bars on the window. That surprised Hans, but only for a moment. Hans bathed and toweled himself off, trimmed his beard and combed his hair. Then he dressed in the modest but clean garb that had been left for him. There were soft woollen breeks, a linen shirt, wool waistcoat and jacket, and a pair of new leather shoes with thick soles. The jacket, Hans noticed, had been embroidered in Arendelle's national colors of blue and red.

Nephew somehow divined the moment he was done and knocked on the door.

"I'm to conduct you to Her Majesty's presence," he said. It would have been nice to know where Lars was, but his brother had not gotten out of the carriage with him and there had been no time to ask why. There was no time now, either. In a few minutes Nephew was prodding him through the door to the Queen's audience private chamber— prodding, because his legs had somehow gone gelatinous, prodding because he hadn't seen her since the night of the wedding and how could he face her now or ever again, prodding, prodding— and Hans was kneeling before the Queen.

"Well met, Mr. Westergaard." Was it his imagination or did her voice come out thin and breathy? Nonsense; what did _she_ have to be nervous about? Hans lowered his head and looked at her shoes.

"Thank you, Petty Officer Urgma," said Elsa, extending her hand. Urgma was a surname? Hans knew he would never think of the man as anything but Nephew.

Hans's tongue was beginning to untie itself. He looked around. The small chamber was almost empty, but Elsa's steward Kai stood to one side of her, and an elderly man Hans did not recognize stood to the other side. By his uniform and insignia Hans knew him to be Fore-Admiral of the Navy. That made him a member of Cabinet.

"Mr. Westergaard," said Elsa— and no, it couldn't be just his imagination, she really did seem to be tripping over the name— "you are hereby pardoned of the charge of conspiracy against the country of Arendelle. Your ban from Arendelle and all her realms of land and sea is lifted, and you shall no more be imprisoned for past crimes. Have you anything to say?"

Hans had no idea what was expected of him; a day ago he'd not thought he would ever see her again, and most of what he wanted to say he couldn't, especially not in from of these other people. What was it Lars had said, when he came to fetch Hans? The Queen was trying to decide how to use him?

"I thank you humbly for your pardon. If there is nothing wanted of me, I will go away, and never trouble you more. But if by any service I might become more worthy of this wholly undeserved pardon, I will undertake it gladly. My thanks, and my life, are and ever will be in your hands, to do with as you will."

"Well said, Mr. Westergaard. Now rise, and take counsel with us. As it happens there _is_ something Arendelle requires of you."

* * *

It was barely a week since Lars had come to fetch him, and now they were embracing on the quay in Arenby's harbor.

"You are a free man," said Lars, pulling back to look at his brother.

"As free as I've ever been," agreed Hans. "I owe much to you, brother."

"You owe me nothing."

"I do," insisted Hans. "You talked to Her Majesty for five minutes and got me to sea again. I don't know how I will ever thank you."

"Her mind was already made up, it seems to me," Lars demurred. "All she wanted from me was some reassurance that you were the man for the job."

"I hope I am."

"You _are_. Now all you have to do is the job given you. Good luck, brother. Do well."

One last embrace and they parted, Lars to one ship and Hans to another.

Nephew followed Hans as closely as a shadow. This was part of the arrangement reached between Queen Elsa, Hans and Fore-Admiral Stigr. Hans— henceforth to be known only as Erik Skide— would spend time on every ship in Elsa's Navy, observing and taking notes on what he saw. He would be known to the seamen and officers only as what he now officially was: an Advisor to the Crown. In one pocket he bore at all times a dispatch from the Crown, signed by Fore-Admiral Stigr and sealed with the Queen's own device, giving Mr. Skide access to all corners of every ship in the Navy.

He also wore the first new clothes he'd had in a year. Elsa had provided him with an abundant new wardrobe of warm wools. _Too_ abundant, in fact: her lavish taste in costume, while striking and more than appropriate for a Queen, would not serve Mr. Skide in his duties. He selected only a few changes of the most practical garments, in serviceable blue-grays. He'd also sewn himself an eyepatch from black cotton. He was wearing it now.

As much as Hans would be observing the Navy, Nephew would be observing Hans. Nephew would also act as Hans's steward, as the need arose. He would be his shadow, equal parts helper and bodyguard.

Hans and Nephew were met on their first ship (the _Forceful Daughter_ ) by its captain. Shortly thereafter, they had cast off. In a few minutes the captain would introduce him to the crew. Hans already knew much about the _Daughter_ , about her crew and her provisions and her arms, but some things you only knew after you'd looked with your own eyes. He spared himself fifteen minutes to stand near the prow and watch the greenish-brown harbor water slipping past. He scrabbled to get his bearings, but the thoughts were slipping past him faster than the waves under the _Daughter_. Mostly, he missed Blank.

Hans gripped his cane, glanced at Nephew standing stone-faced beside him, and turned to his work.


	14. The First Mission

It was almost shocking how quickly Hans acclimated. There was some difficulty with his leg, but no more than there had been on dry land; and at sea, one relied on hands as much as feet for balance. Hans also realized that Blank's rolling gait had been almost identical to the motion of the waves. Intentionally or not, Blank had been preparing him for this for months. He took a few days to reaccustom to the peculiar schedule of seamen, to refresh his knowledge of their daily business and to learn their names. It was not long before he felt he'd never left the sea.

The crew, of course, were another matter. All of them distrusted him because he existed outside their rank structure, and unlike a mere passenger he was not content to remain outside. He had expected this. He was not surprised when, a few days after they'd left Arenby, there was some friction— not much, but enough. He had climbed up into the rigging to get a better sense of what was going on below, and also to be close enough to watch some men furl the sails.

"Better get down from there, Mr. Skide," said one of them. "It's not child's play we're doing here. You'll fall and break your neck, you will."

Hans, who was more steady in the rigging than anywhere else on the ship, said merely, "That would be a pity."

"A _great_ pity, aye," said another, saltier seaman. It was One-Eye Joe, a petty officer who Hans knew had disliked him on sight. There was more than a hint of a threat in the words. Hans resolved to watch One-Eye Joe carefully, and then put the incident from his mind.

Of course, Hans was watching everyone carefully. It was what he was best at, what he'd always been best at. He talked to the crew and remembered things of no importance in case they became important later. He dined with the officers and gambled with the seamen. He knew it would be surpassingly offensive to force himself into the daily running of the ship, but his skill with rope earned him the grudging gratitude of seamen tired of eternally repairing rigging and stitching up holes in the sails. And grateful men talked.

And whenever he had a few moments, he made notes in code, scribbling everything he learned in a little leather journal he kept on his person at all times. In a few days Hans's journal was full, and he began another. By the end of a week, he had filled three, and it was time to move on. He put to shore and boarded the _Barricade_.

She was a larger ship commanded by an officer of higher rank than the captain of the _Daughter_. There were more books to be gone over, more crew members to observe, more dark corners to probe. It took Hans a few weeks to figure out what had caused the irregularities in her records, and when he had unravelled the combination of mismanagement and malfeasance that had punched holes in her budget, he commandeered all the relevant documents from her furious captain and then got away from that captain's sidearm with a quickness.

He moved from ship to ship. He did not board every vessel in Elsa's navy, only the ones that had turned up certain red flags in his research. But it was enough. On some he found mutiny brewing, on some fraud, on some simply weak command or insufficient training. He got better at noticing the signs, sharper at reading the men, faster at inspecting the boats. He pored over captain's logs and provision sheets and arms lists until the numbers swam through his mind even in his sleep. He compared the numbers to their real-life counterparts, to find out where the leaks were. When he found irregularities, he talked to the men responsible. Sometimes he told them what he had found and watched their eyes widen and their faces pale as they realized that they'd miscalculated; when this happened, he listened to their apologies and then walked them through their books so they'd know how to prevent future errors. Other times, he let them drown in their own lies. The trick was knowing which was which.

One thing every ship he visited had in common: morale was abysmal. Half the men were indentured sailors working off debt or a criminal record. It was possible to instill pride and discipline in such men, Hans knew, but not by treating them like animals and adding years to their indentures for every little offence. Even those who had chosen the sea willingly were either disillusioned with sea life, or trapped in their rank with no hope of advancing because the officers at the top found too much profit for so little work to even think of retiring.

There were other problems as well. Mostly Hans was treated with polite indifference, right up until the crews realized he was here to oversee them at their jobs. That was the crucial moment. The way a man behaved in the split second he realized he was being watched could tell the watcher a great deal, and Hans developed a knack for manipulating that moment, stretching it out, learning from it. Of course he made some enemies. He handled them as best he could. It wasn't until the _Gull's Wing_ that he actually found himself in a fist fight. He gave a few knocks to an angry drunken midshipman named Herbert when Herbert and his friends attempted to jump Hans and wrest his cane from him. He won himself a shiner, a bloody lip, and a few bodily bruises. He also won the liking of more than half the lower crew, who had not been overfond of Herbert. Nephew treated his mild wounds and the crew talked more freely with him after that, and Hans decided it might be expedient to get in fights more often. But it was not personal. He thought no more of Herbert than of a ballast rat; the poor sod was a symptom, not a cause.

In Vakretta and Corona, whenever Hans put to shore to board a new ship, he turned all of his notes over to Elsa's embassy to be conveyed back to her. Between drop-offs, he kept his notes in a thrice-locked steel box. He found himself in Vakretta with a few days to kill, just after the New Year. Nephew knew exactly how to use his time, and made for his favorite bawdy house at once. Hans tagged along to drink in the common room and make conversation with the cheerful, red-faced proprietress of the establishment, but he didn't take a bed; and when Nephew was done they returned to their lodgings in a more respectable part of town and spoke not a word about it.

Together with Elsa and Fore-Admiral Stigr, Hans had plotted an itinerary that took him through the lesser offenders— smaller ships, with less egregious discrepancies— through to the ones that caused them the most alarm. They figured that would allow Hans to regain his sea-legs and hone his methods before he attempted what they had begun calling the snake pit: the _Våren Fryse,_ Elsa's flagship, the largest, most modern, most highly-armed ship in the Navy. It also had a voracious appetite for gold, which seemed to disappear down it's well-appointed maw as fast as the Treasury could pour it in. Spring was well advanced by the time Hans boarded the _Våren Fryse_ in Sterlsport, where she was taking on newer, more powerful artillery.

His presence was of course met at once with suspicion. But where on other ships the higher-ranking officers had kept their subordinates in check, here even the first commander treated Hans with open contempt. The Admiral did not appear to notice or care. In fact there was a great deal the Admiral did not notice on the _Fryse_.

"Mr. Skide," said Commander Jorl on their very first meeting. "Doesn't _Skide_ mean _Bastard_?"

"You're not the first to remark on it," said Hans pleasantly.

"Wasn't your father ashamed to pass on such a name as that to his son?" Jorl, who stood half a head over Hans and weighed half a man more, was pressing into Hans's personal space in a way that conveyed an obvious threat. Hans sighed internally; he knew Jorl's type, having met plenty such before. He was probably a second son of a second son from a very old name. He was in his middle-age, and considered his own position and opinions above reproach. The man would be experienced, and an able seaman, Hans had no doubt; but Jorl was also the ship's treasurer, and the _Fryse_ had seen some _very_ peculiar losses in the years since Jorl had been promoted to his present rank.

Furthermore, Jorl had obvious supporters on board. Before long half the crew— higher-ranking commissioned officers, mostly— were calling him Mr. Bastard to his face. On its own this did not bother him. Of graver concern were their covert attempts to sabotage his work. Things were moved around his berth, lines were pulled up just at the moment he passed over them so that he tripped, grog and stew were spilled on him by unconvincing accident.

Still, he made his observations and his notes. Even the hazing antics of the officers had their uses. Hans, who had spent his childhood in terror of these sorts of bullies, was surprised to find he did not fear them at all. They could not even make them angry. At least, not by hazing him. But one evening a few lieutenants in their cups began muttering in his hearing about the Queen, calling her _The Virgin_ in mocking tones.

"She's a right iceberg, she is," muttered Jorl. "An' we'll punch a hole in our hull if we don't steer clear o' her. Only one way to defeat an iceberg, lads, and that's to _melt_ her." The ensuing laughter around the table fortunately covered Hans's sudden attempt to rise to his feet, his hands curled into fists, the hair bristling on his neck.

"That's not what you're here for," said Nephew calmly, pulling Hans down by the tails of his coat. "They don't know you heard. Don't let 'em know you heard, and don't be a damned idiot."

Of course. He was being foolish. Hans sat, counted his breaths, and pretended to sip his wine. Their attacks on him meant nothing, meant _less_ than nothing, but when they talked about Elsa like that— he had completely forgotten himself, nearly blown his cover.

He realized with a jolt why it was that their bullying so little affected him, when it would have reduced Hans of the Southern Isles to an impotent, furious mouse. His crime and Elsa's pardon had overcome his old fears and weaknesses, had thrown everything about his life into brilliant perspective. It was hard to be upset about the ridiculous jockeying of small-minded men when he'd done so much worse, _been forgiven_ for so much worse.

It was strange and heady and purifying to realize, sitting there beside Nephew in the smoky officer's den, that the only person who could truly hurt him now was Elsa.

* * *

Once a week the commissioned officers liked to hold a Fangensflukt tournament to gamble for a Stew Pot. The Pot was a literal kettle into which any crewmember could throw their buy-in. But although the tournament was technically open to all, no non-commissioned officer or lower seaman could afford it. They all watched the tournament, though, often gambling amongst themselves, and played their instruments and danced and sang.

Hans had begged off playing every week so far, preferring to drink with the noncommissioned officers. He had learned much this way. Some of the men he even rather liked. Mocking, humorous Petty Officer Jakes, earnest, sweet-faced Ensign Aleksander, bull-headed Quartermaster Ivan. Hans thought that if things had been different they might have been his friends. It angered him that these men, who were honest and capable, had no hope of command while those at the top gambled and skimmed and neglected the navy into a sandbar.

After a month with the _Fryse_ , his cane went missing. Hans could get around well enough without it, but that was not the point. Its theft was a message, and he needed to know who had sent it. As importantly, if he did not recover the cane soon, it would send another message to the crew: _I can be toyed with. You can have the better of me_.

The next day, Hans went on deck before the tournament began and saw his fossiltree cane propped in the Stew Pot.

Hans gave no sign he had seen the cane, and thought for a moment. The easiest thing would be simply to walk up to the Stew Pot and reclaim it. He could even demand to know which of the crew had planted it there— if he wanted to lose their respect forever, along with any hope of completing his investigation. No, that would be playing by their rules. He must reclaim the cane some other way, and quickly.

So it was that when the Fangensflukt boards were laid out, Hans walked up and seated himself very deliberately at the one in the middle, across from one of the officers. Jorl himself sauntered up, clapping a heavy hand on Han's back.

"Since when do you join our tournaments?" Jorl snarled. "Thought they were beneath you, Lord Bastard."

"They are," agreed Hans brightly, "but I've decided to stoop today. As you see, I've bought in." He nodded at the cane still poking jauntily from the Stew Pot.

A familiar laugh sounded from down the deck— Jakes was listening. Aleksander, watching from behind Jorl's shoulder, winked at Hans. Jorl looked as if he'd swallowed a rotten onion, and excused himself to his own table to set up.

Hans had watched enough of these games to know how to approach them. The officers played boldly, but without restraint. If he was patient and prudent, Hans could let them defeat themselves and win the Pot.

He started as Captor against a lieutenant who played sloppily, and one of Jorl's underlings who actually played rather well, then as Prisoner against the Admiral Bruin, who played indecisively and gave Hans an easy victory.

Aleksander once came up to him bearing a plate of bread and cured meat, and a flagon of wine.

"Winning's thirsty work, isn't it?" he asked, a cheeky grin lighting up his sunburned face. Hans's opponent, Skadi Thick, scowled.

"You've inspired us," Aleksander went on. "Some of the boys are betting on this one, so take care, aye?"

"And which way do you fall, Ensign?" asked Hans. "For me or against?"

"Oh, against," said Aleksander easily. "You see, everyone else was for, and a one-sided gamble's no fun for anyone."

"You can take your food and drink right off then," said Hans. "I don't trust a crumb of it."

Aleksander, chuckling, went back to his friends, and Hans swept Skadi Thick off the board.

Hans did not even end up playing Jorl, who was knocked out in the fourth round by someone else. In the end he won the Pot in a quick game against Second Commander Blud. The whole crew had been betting one way or another, and there followed much noisy divvying up of proceeds. Ivan and Jakes brought the Stew Pot over to Hans themselves, crowing and waving the cane above their heads. He rummaged through his spoils and found gifts for them: a nicely carved pipe for Ivan, a pocket lens for Jakes. He gave a silver toasting fork to the ship's cook and a pair of gold-handled scissors to the surgeon. To a laughing Aleksander, he presented a fishbone from dinner.

"For your loyalty!" he explained while Aleksander and the others roared with laughter.

"Be careful what you bet next, Bastard, for you're like to lose it," growled Jorl. He disappeared down the stairs to the officers' quarters with a bottle and a sour look.

"Oh Ba-astard," sang Jakes, "Bet you I can piss further off the side than you!"

Others took up the refrain. _Bastard, I bet I can catch a gull faster'n you! Bastard, who looks more like a shaved bear, you or me? Bet I have more warts on my johnson than you, Bastard!_

The name, sung and bandied and tossed about by men who respected him, perhaps even liked him for what he'd done, lost its potency. If Hans was lucky, everyone would call him Bastard after tonight, and every time Jorl heard it he would think of this defeat. Hans was satisfied with the day's work.

Just before he slipped away to sleep, Aleksander begged a word. The crew was still drunk and merry on deck, but Aleksander's face was serious.

"It was a shabby thing they done," he said. "Jorl and his men— you should know it won't stop. They'll hate you more now. Be careful, Erik." It was the first time anyone had called him anything other than Bastard or Mr. Skide, and Hans took a fraction of a second too long to respond.

"I will," he said, hoping Aleksander had not noticed. "Good night."

* * *

 **A/N: haha I got so depressed I just...forgot to to update for 2 weeks lol**


	15. Beaten

The _Fryse_ , one of Elsa's largest and best armed ships, was little more than a hole blasted in the side of her navy. Admiral Bruin looked the other way while his officers robbed the Crown blind. His commanders, his lieutenants, several ambitious non-commissioned officers, all were in someone's pay or looking the other way in hopes of future reward.

Hans and Nephew had to survive till the beginning of March, for that was when the _Våren Fryse_ returned to Arenby and they could make their report in person to Queen Elsa. But Hans's presence had certainly alerted the officers to their danger; whatever evidence he did not find here now, on this very voyage, would be buried at sea and lost forever. What he had found already was so damning, he feared constantly that it would be taken and destroyed. His notes filled the steel box, which he'd bolted to his berth— a flimsy arrangement, he knew.

"That box is locked three times," Nephew said when he caught Hans fretting at it.

"Yes, but it's only bolted to wood," Hans pointed out. "It can be yanked from the wall, or the chain cut, and the whole thing dumped overboard in the night."

"I'd worry more about _you_ being dumped overboard in the night," said Nephew placidly. "You know Commander Jorl'll have your beard and the head it's on, if you don't take more care. What were you doing climbing up to the crow's nest earlier this evening? Don't you know how easy it would be to make you fly?"

"I needed to talk to the lookout, and I needed to do it where only the gulls would hear," said Hans. "But Nephew, this is more important. I still have work to do here, I haven't found the answers I need. But I can hardly focus on that and worry about protecting the evidence I have. It's not safe on the ship. I dare not leave in in the room alone."

"We're two weeks out from Arenby," said Nephew.

"And by the time we reach it, this box'll be a habitation for crabs," said Hans. "Nephew, you need to take it to shore. You need to get it to Queen Elsa."

"And leave you to Jorl? Queen Elsa gave you into my charge. She wants you kept safe."

"She wants these notes," Hans insisted.

"Then jump ship and bring 'em to her yourself," said Nephew stubbornly. Hans sighed and raked his hands through his hair.

"Are you worried I'll try to flee?" he said wearily. "Do you fear treachery on my part? Is that why you will not leave?"

"You were pardoned," Nephew said, shrugging. "Flee if you want; I'm not your jailor. I fear what'll happen to my neck if I turn up two weeks early and you turn up dead."

"Then let me write a letter," insisted Hans. "I'll explain everything. _Please_ , Nephew. I can't leave yet. I have too much to do, but I dare not leave this box alone in my cabin. You _must_ do this."

Nephew chewed his cheek a moment and then nodded curtly. "Aye," he said. "You write your letter, and I'll be gone this night."

* * *

 _To Your Royal Majesty Queen Elsa of Arendelle_ ,

 _Please accept these documents from the hand of Petty Officer Urgma, of Your Royal Navy, with regards from Mr. Skide of no nation. It is my intention, Your Majesty, to remain with the flagship Våren Fryse to complete the mission You have charged me with. Petty Officer Urgma returns early at my urging and with my sanction, for the security of the mission. Should I, by some accident to my body, fail to return to make my final report in person, please know that Petty Officer Urgma has my fullest respect and commendation for his offices._

 _Yours in humble gratitude,_

 _Erik Skide_

 _P.S. Scritch Blank's neck for me._

* * *

That night, while most of the crew were in their bunks, Hans and Nephew stole out of their cabin in darkness, the steel box carried between them. They snuck through the passages that led to a lower deck where some small boats were kept. Waiting for them on deck was Aleksander.

"Thank you for coming," Hans whispered. He knew it was a risk— could he _really_ trust Aleksander?— but he did not have much choice. He could not lower the boat, with Nephew in it, all by himself without making so much noise they'd surely be spotted. He had explained as much as he could to Aleks, who had asked an uncomfortable lot of questions but had ultimately agreed to help. He only prayed Aleks was as trustworthy as he seemed. At least he was quiet.

Together they winched the boat down to the water and watched Nephew row himself silently away. Luckily the moon was close to new, and the stars were bright, and they were only a day's row from a southern port of Edapest where Nephew could arrange swifter transportation.

With Nephew gone, Hans felt the danger in every step. Nephew's absence of course was marked at once; the very evening after Nephew cast off with the steel box of notes, Hans returned to his cabin to find it had been ransacked. _Ransack away_ , he thought with grim satisfaction. _There's nothing here to find_.

Of course, that left him in even _greater_ danger. Deprived of Nephew's protection at night, he slept with one eye open. Even so, he woke one night to find a shadow hanging over him with a knife in its hand. He whacked it with his cane and it vanished. He never did find out who it was.

Instead of sleeping, Hans took to prowling around the ship at night. Of course, even at night there were always men about their work, but under cloak of darkness he could slip into certain berths and do a little ransacking of his own. He was careful never to leave a trace of his visits and was never spotted, but it was not enough. What he really needed was access to the higher officers' quarters. In the beginning he had often joined them at brandy and cigars after dinner, but he had been unable to discover much because they would not talk freely in his presence. Now they would not even invite him to dine with them. Theoretically his certificate from Queen Elsa granted him unlimited access to every part of the ship, but all pretense on that score had gone over the side of the boat with Nephew.

Only a few days remained before they docked at Arenby. While the officers enjoyed their usual Fangensflukt tournament, Hans sought out the Quartermaster.

"How can I be of service, Bastard?" asked Ivan.

"I need the keys to the upper officers' quarters," said Hans levelly.

"Now, Bastard, you know I cannot do that," said Ivan.

"You know I bear a certificate from Fore-Admiral Stigr authorizing me freedom of the ship, Ivan."

"Aye, that I do know," agreed Ivan, "but nowhere on that letter of yours does it say I'm to forswear my office and relinquish my keys. You can go wherever you like, but if it's behind a locked door you want to search, you'll do it with me along."

Hans grinned suddenly. Ivan was a hard one to turn, and Hans was grateful for it. "In truth," he said, "I won't be sorry to have your company. Come."

Ivan let him into the Captain's office, where he went straight for the bookshelf. Old logs, accounts of arms and provisions, treasury receipts… He'd been over all these when he first joined the _Fryse_ , and found nothing. The books had been so flawlessly clean, in fact, that Hans had wondered where the natural human error was. All the vanished gold had left a paper trail that would hold up in any court of law; not a single copper penny had gone missing that wasn't properly accounted for.

"What're you looking for?" Ivan asked, flipping open a book of poetry on the Admiral's desk and thumbing through it unconcernedly.

"I'm not sure," Hans admitted. There was nothing new to see here, no secret books, no hidden compartments. "Come on, let's go."

"Fine by me," said Ivan. "These poems are rubbish, anyway." He dropped the book on the desk and turned to the door.

Hans glanced at the little book. It was a simple collection of illuminated poems about the sea, the sort of cheap thing Hans had seen in a hundred quayside bookstores. He'd read it himself, and Ivan was right, the poems _were_ rubbish, the etched pictures sloppy and unoriginal. This copy was grubby and dog-eared, yet Hans had never seen the Admiral reading it or any other book.

He flipped through it once more, still not sure what he was looking for, until— there! Each illustration should have a blank recto, but these were covered in lettering. The script was obviously meant to mimic the printed poems, so that a casual glance through the book would rouse no suspicions; but once you knew what you were looking at the subterfuge was unmistakable.

 _Vkrt av Frbshr's 167_

 _Mdm Slv's cathouse back door_

 _Spk th flt isle dmnds entree_

 _Up2dn4_

Hans didn't know what most of it meant, but he recognized Madame Sylvie's Cathouse as a popular and _very_ private establishment frequented by the rich and titled.

There was more like that, on the backside of every illustrated page. _Thank you, sweet Ivan_ , Hans thought, and dropped the book into his pocket before following Ivan out.

Hans's heart was thumping as he returned to his cabin to look over what he'd found. He was not sure what to do with the book. He no longer dared leave anything alone in his room— especially now that he had no Nephew and no locked box to give his things an illusion of security. But he could not very well keep it on his person: the book's theft would no doubt be noticed soon, and of course Hans would be searched as soon as that happened. The book would be taken from him, perhaps destroyed, and all its secrets lost.

There was nothing for it. Hans would make a copy that would not be found. Even if _he_ did not survive, the code in the book _must_.

Hans looked through his chest of personal belongings, praying for inspiration. There were all his winnings from the Stew Pot, mostly cash and interesting or valuable objects. Nothing that he could use.

Hans's eye alit on a waistcoat he had brought but little worn. It was very fine wool of a deep cobalt color, embroidered about the lapels with poppy-red mountains and ice-blue streams. It was not the sort of thing that Erike Skide would wear, but it would make a very fine gift.

Hans took his penknife and ripped out the stitches that attached the silk lining to the waistcoat. The inside was flatlined with muslin. Perfect. Working quickly, Hans transcribed the encoded messages in lead pencil to the stiff cotton. Then he stitched it back up, folded it neatly into a satchel along with the book of poems, and went abovedecks.

A fine rain was beginning to fall with the last of the evening light, and the decks were mostly empty. Aleks had just finished bringing down the flags and was looking over them for tears and dirt, to be flown again fresh tomorrow. The officers had retired to their cigars and brandy; how much longer did Hans have before the theft was discovered? Did he have time to sneak the book back to its place?

"Aleks," he said, willing his voice not to shake.

"Bastard," Aleks greeted him, nodding. "We missed you at the tournament. It was the last one; you know we make land in a few days. Where did you and Ivan run off to?"

"I was finishing something up," said Hans. He pulled the waistcoat from his satchel and presented it to Aleks, willing his hands not to shake.

Aleks put down the flag he was mending and took the garment carefully in his hands, holding it up to the light.

"It's a gift," Hans said in a rush. "I...I wanted to thank you for your kindness. It's been a pleasure knowing you, Aleks. It has, truly. Go ahead, try it on."

Aleks shrugged out of his old brown wool vest and slipped on the blue-and-red one. It fit him well once he had fastened the shining brass buttons.

"I don't...I don't…" Aleks stammered. "I didn't get you anything," he finally said, and threw one arm around Hans's shoulders. He seemed to hesitate. "Erik, there's some who say... _things_...about you. But I— I don't believe them. I _won't_ believe them."

"What sorts of things?" Hans asked cautiously.

Aleks, suddenly shy, wouldn't meet his eyes. "Never mind," he mumbled. "Just things. You've always done right by us lower sorts, anyway, and I've found that counts for a lot."

"Lower sorts?"

"You know, me and Ivan, and Jakes and Two-Tooth Joe, and Knife-Hand Surger, and Cooklyn and the rest of them."

"Aleks, you're not a lower sort; you're the best sort there is," said Hans, wishing with all his heart that he could tell his friend everything, knowing he couldn't, not here, not now. _But I'll make it up to you, somehow_ , he vowed. _Only please don't hate me when you find out._

"Hans!"

The shout came from behind him. Sleeplessness, nerves, and the talk with Aleks had put him off his guard.

Hans turned.

Jorl and his two lieutenants bore down on him, grinning like they'd just won the Stew Pot. Hans barely saw them. All he could see, as they kicked him in the stomach and bore him off to the brig, was the look of abject betrayal on Aleks's face as Hans responded to the name of a traitor.

* * *

"Good to finally get you alone," said Jorl, cracking his knuckles. "I've been looking forward to this for a long time." Could he be any more trite? Hans resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"Sorry I can't say the same," said Hans.

"You're a Westergaard," announced Jorl. Hans tried not to show any reaction.

"Oh?" he said nonchalantly. "News to me. I thought I was a Bastard." Jorl rewarded his cheek with a knee to the gut. Hans doubled over, retching.

"Oh, you're that, too," said Jorl. "You're the bastard who tried to assassinate the Queen. I knew there was something off about you. You might've got the wool down over Admiral Stigr's eyes, but I imagine the Queen won't be thrilled to learn you're spying on her military."

"I imagine not," said Hans cautiously. If he was lucky, Jorl and his pals would do what they were _supposed_ to do and bring him to the Queen themselves. If he was unlucky…

"There's a lot of people would pay heavy gold to get their hands on you," Jorl went on. "I'm told the Southern Isles have the finest Navy in the hemisphere. Might be they have need of a captain for one of those fine ships. Might be they would thank me for returning their long-lost prince."

Jorl traced one finger along the edge of Hans's eyepatch. "I always figured that was a cheap disguise," he said. "Let's see how blind you are _now_." And he elbowed Hans in his good eye. Hans felt his whole spine explode in white hot pain, felt a warm stickiness dripping down his face, felt his eyelid rapidly swelling shut.

Perfect. Now he was blind in _both_ eyes.

"If you're planning to ransom me back to my brothers," Hans gasped, "then why are you beating me up first?" This earned him a cuff to the ear.

"You think you know everything," sighed Jorl. "I know a few things myself, sonny. I know your brothers want you, and I know they want you _alive_...and I know they don't care what condition you're in, so long as you've got a little breath left in you."

Shit. _Shit shit shit_.

"Don't you think the Queen would pay more for my head?" Hans asked desperately. _Beat me, cut me, kill me, only don't send me back to my brothers_.

But Jorl only scoffed. "That virgin? I've got as much gold off her as I'm ever likely to get. It's a ship I want now— and not one of these Arendellian tubs, either. I want a proper ship. A Southern Isles galley." He held something up— Hans could make out dim movement and shapes through his swollen eye. The thing whistled through the air and bludgeoned him in the chest, knocking him over, then rained blows down on his thighs and buttocks until he was curled up, covering his head with his hands. His cane. The cane _she'd_ given him, and they were using it to beat him—

A flash of blue light filled Hans's blurry vision, and Jorl swore and dropped the cane with a clatter.

"Lock him in, gents," he said angrily to his lieutenants, and Hans was left alone. He groped out in the darkness until he felt the cane and cradled it to his chest. It was cold to the touch, cold like Blank, soothing and familiar, and the darkness was filled with the scent of snow.

* * *

Hans woke, he knew not how much later, and his eye had finished swelling shut. He couldn't see a damn thing now, but he could listen. Clutching his cane, he struggled to his feet. He was bruised all over, his hands and face crusted with blood, but one thing was lucky: Jorl hadn't attended the Westergaard school of physical abuse. Hans would probably recover from these injuries just in time for Caleb and Pieter to start in on him.

"I'm happy to see you standing," said a calm voice nearby. Hans jumped: he hadn't realized he had company.

"Admiral Bruin?" he guessed.

"Right in one," said the Admiral.

"Sir, you must know that Lieutenant Jorl intends to relinquish me to King Caleb of the Southern Isles."

"Yes," agreed Admiral Bruin sadly, "I'm told you're a spy for the Westergaards."

"Admiral, you _must_ return me to Arenby. Bring me to court. You must—"

"Oh I _must_ , must I?" said the Admiral. He sounded amused. "You may be a spy, but you're not a very good one, are you? It's unfortunate your little cohort abandoned you before the job was done. Unfortunate for _you_ , that is. Quite lucky for me. You've been sniffing out our weaknesses, but I know you didn't find anything you could really use. Not till _now_."

Hans felt the leather strap of his satchel sliding off his shoulder, heard the rustle of papers.

"So you've found my little notebook," said the Admiral. "I'm almost even impressed. I've had that book of rhymes sitting out on my desk for ten years and it's never raised so much as an eyebrow. And now it never will." There was a crackle, a sudden flare of heat, an acrid smell of burned paper.

"You've been spying for the enemy," said the Admiral. "Jorl wants to turn coat, but I'm too old for such things. I simply want to retire to a certain little island I happen to know of, and put my military career behind me. It's only too bad that Jorl acted without my knowledge or consent, returning you to your brothers; naturally, I will cooperate with Her Majesty in any ensuing investigations. Now, Mr. Westergaard, I must be going. There's a very nice Vakretta claret just _singing_ my name."

Hans clutched his cane and paced about his cell.

It was some hours later before he heard the door to the brig opening again. It was hard to know what time it was, but Hans guessed that it might be nearly nighttime now. He was famished, and horribly thirsty. He'd slept twice, in uneasy short bursts.

But now, hearing footsteps, he stood still and waited. Whoever it was had come alone. They pressed a chunk of cheese and a flagon of rainwater into his hands. Hans downed them both in a few silent moments.

"Is it true?" whispered Aleks, once the provisions were gone. "Are you really Hans Westergaard?" His voice broke apart on the name.

"It's true," said Hans, suddenly thankful for the blindness that hid Aleks's face from him. "But it's not— I'm here on Queen Elsa's orders."

"I don't see how," said Aleks. "I've known...I've known things were bad here for a while. I was just a boy when I first joined up, and things were different then. The old King was still alive. I've watched things slide down and down and down, for years now, but I always hoped it might get better. I thought if I kept my head down and did my job, maybe someday it would...would get…"

"It still might," said Hans. "Aleks, listen to me. I'm not a spy."

"They found _papers_ on you," Aleks hissed. "I heard the Admiral talking! What was in all those journals you were always scribbling in?" A pause, and Aleks gasped, "What was in that box we sent off with Nephew? You asked me for _help_ , and I just went along with you. Oh god, I'm a traitor, I'll be hung—"

"Aleks, please—"

"How _could_ you, Erik— Hans— you _Bastard!_ "

"You won't be hung," whispered Hans. "Not if you do what must be done. Aleks, they're planning to return me to the Southern Isles."

"But we're a day out from Arenby—"

"They aren't taking me to Arenby."

"But _why?_ "

"Use your imagination," Hans urged. "Aleks, you know what needs to be done. You're good, you're one of the only good ones left. _Do what you have to_ , _Aleks_."

"Don't...don't keep calling me that," mumbled Aleks. "Just...stay here."

 _Where else can I go?_ Hans thought, but Aleks had gone by then.

* * *

Some time later, he heard the door to the brig opening again, this time more quietly than before, and muffled footsteps. More food and water was pressed into Hans's hands, and while he devoured it, the lock on his cell was silently picked. Still blind, he had no way of knowing who had come for him, but of course it could only be...

"You're doing the right thing," he whispered.

"Shut up," Aleks whispered back.

Aleks bound Hans's hands with rope and led him silently out of the brig. Hans had to rely on his companion entirely for guidance; he couldn't see, and his limbs were stiff and watery from hunger and inaction. It seemed to take an age to reach the outside, to climb into a boat on the deck, and then another age of waiting in nerve-wracking silence while Aleks let it down to the water. But finally this was done, and a soft _thump_ and a gentle rocking of the boat let him know Aleks had gotten in too.

Without a word Hans felt around for an oar, and together they rowed until the sounds of the _Våren Fryse_ had receded.

Then they rowed some more.

The swelling in Hans's eye must have been going down, for a vague grayness accompanied the growing warmth of the rising sun hours later. He had never known such perfect silence. He heard nothing but the gentle lapping of waves against the side of the boat, Aleks's steady breaths, and the beating of his own heart.

Finally he risked speech.

"What convinced you?" he asked, still quiet, for he didn't know how far they'd come and sound often carried strangely over open water.

"I'm not convinced of anything," whispered Aleks. "I just know I don't trust the Admiral to return you to Her Majesty. I know I'm doing wrong, I know it goes against protocol. I'll probably be court-martialled, going over the Admiral's head like this. Maybe I'll still be hung for treason. But damn it, Hans, if I'm to be hung I swear on my sister's grave you'll swing too."

"That's fair," said Hans. "Are you still wearing the waistcoat I gave you?"

Aleks made a low sound of begrudging assent.

"Think to bring any water?"

Even blind, he could see Aleks rolling his eyes as he pressed a waterskin into his hands. Hans grinned and drank deeply before settling once more into his rowing. Perhaps they'd both survive this after all.


	16. Landfall

It took them three days to reach land. In all that time, Hans was not sure Aleks ever slept. There was just barely food and water enough for them both, and they rowed till their hands blistered and bled. On the second day Hans could open his eye a slit and by the time land hove into view he could make it out, albeit somewhat fuzzily.

"We're on the Arendelle coast," said Hans. "I'm not sure if we're east or west of Arenby, though."

"We're west," grunted Aleks as they pulled and shoved the boat onto shore.

"How can you tell?" asked Hans.

"Grew up an hour's ride away," said Aleks. "I know where we are and how to get where we're going. Now hush."

They hiked up the coast the rest of that day. In the evening, they hunkered in a barn outside a small village and munched on the last of their bread and cheese.

"We're going to need more food if we're to walk the rest of the way," Hans pointed out after they'd eaten.

"Aye," said Aleks.

"We'll have to steal it or buy it. Somehow I get the feeling you won't want to steal it."

"We aren't walking," Aleks said. "There's fishermen's carts that travel to and from the city every day. We were too late landing to catch one today, but we'll be on one in the morning. Now...now hold still, I have to tie your feet so you don't run in the night."

"As you like," agreed Hans, leaning back against a haypile and closing his eyes.

Long before next light, Aleks threw his own heavy cloak around Hans to conceal his bound hands. He followed Aleks quite cheerfully as he led the way to a crossing where fish carts trundled by on their way to the city. Aleks paid a driver to allow him and Hans to ride with the piles of glistening fishflesh, and they were passing under the gates to the city by the time the sun was high in the sky.

Hans followed Aleks up the broadway to the palace. It loomed over them, gracious and imposing. Suddenly he felt his days of hard exercise and short rations; his knees were wobbly and his throat felt dry as a stone. He caught Aleks's eye and for a moment, they were sharing a look of perfect terror and sympathy. Then Aleks remembered Hans was a traitor, cleared his throat and pulled his captive up the steps to the Steward's office. He spoke quietly to a guard, who took one look at Hans and hurried off.

In only a few moments Kai was walking into view, leading them into the Palace, through the halls, up the stairs to Elsa's private audience chamber.

Kai noticed Hans's bindings and hurried to cut them loose. "Wait here, please," he said politely. And he was gone, leaving the pair from the _Våren Fryse_ to fidget and pace and chew their lips. Hans couldn't peel his gaze away from the inner door, not even to meet his friend's eye. His hands clutched each other as tightly as if they were still tied. He sweated under Aleks's cloak. Would she come in person? Would she see him? What would she say?

Would she be proud?

The inner door blew off its hinges as Blank exploded through it, galloping toward Hans. Aleks emitted a shriek of terror and leapt back, but Hans slumped gratefully against Blank's broad back. The snow thing bounced around him in frantic, joyful circuits, pausing only to rake his face with its icy tongue, to gnaw his knuckles, to step on his feet. When he staggered, its bulk supported him, which was good because—

" _Hans!_ "

Elsa came flying into the room, her hair streaming behind her in a half-finished braid, her skirt hiked above her knees to let her run. She rocketed into Hans, threw her arms around him while Blank gleefully circled them both. Elsa seemed to be shaking, her face paler than he'd ever seen.

 _I thought I'd never see you again_ , he thought, and in a moment the whole of what he'd accomplished fell upon him at once: the risks, the dangers, the beatings, the paranoia. The evidence. The mission. All of it for her, for her…

 _I thought I'd never see you again_ , he was thinking, and suddenly his lips were on her hair and her face, pressing kisses against her bare palms.

"I thought you were _dead_ ," she whispered, so quiet he barely heard. "I thought— I thought—"

" _Aauaagh!_ " Aleks yelped from the corner. Hans and Elsa jerked apart. Blank had cornered Aleks and was trying to smell his breath, all razor teeth and dagger claws and eight-inch ridge spines.

"Blank, knock it off!" Hans shouted. Blank ignored him.

"Blank, _down_ ," Elsa said in a deep, commanding voice. Blank dropped to all fours and padded happily over to its people.

"Aleks, are you all right?" Hans said, rushing to his friend. "I'm so sorry, Blank can be overwhelming, I wasn't thinking…"

"Overwhelming—?" Aleks wheezed, clutching his chest. "I don't— know what— you mean—"

"Hans, who…?"

Hans straightened up and faced the queen.

"Your Majesty," he said, "May I present Ensign Aleksander, of the _Våren Fryse_ , who has braved many dangers to bring me here. The mission could not have succeeded without his help. He has risked much, and would, I think, be grateful for your benediction."

"Of course," said Elsa, gracious and regal even in her dishevelment. "Ensign Aleksander, please accept my thanks. I am eager to learn what part you have played in bringing Hans home. Will you do me the honor of dining with us this evening, so that we can talk more?"

"Y-y-yes, of course, Your Majesty," stammered Aleks.

"Thank you. Kai will conduct you to a chamber, that you may rest and see to your most immediate needs."

"Before you go, can I just borrow your waistcoat for a moment?" Aleks stared at Hans, flabbergasted, then shrugged off the waistcoat and handed it over.

"I'll get it back to you soon," he said, walking with Aleks to the door where Kai waited. On the threshold he paused and flung his arms around the young man who'd risked so much to bring him here. "Thank you. And...I'm sorry I couldn't tell you."

"You know I wouldn't have believed you," Aleks muttered. "I _didn't_ believe you. It's I who should be apologizing, Eri— Hans. You bastard, I should have known."

"You couldn't know," he said gently. "I was right about you, Aleks. You are the best sort. I'll see you at dinner?"

"Aye," nodded Aleks, and followed Kai from the room.

Blank stared at Hans and Elsa. Elsa stared at Hans. Hans realized with a flush of embarrassment what she was staring at, his face a map of bruises and scabs in spite of Aleks's attempts to doctor him, his beard and clothes a mess.

"Forgive my appearance," he mumbled, shamefaced.

"No!" said Elsa, too quickly. Then, "No, not at all. You look...taller."

She smiled at him, shyly, and he smiled back, and it was a while before they moved. But eventually Elsa remembered herself. She took a glove from her reticule and began pulling it on, but Hans stopped her, one large sun-browned hand closing over her small white one.

"Don't," he said. "Not yet."

"Hans, I—"

"Would you like to look at what I've brought you?" Hans asked, proffering the waistcoat he'd taken from Aleks. Elsa, eyes still fixed on his, nodded faintly.

"Very well. Let's get started."

* * *

In the solar of the ruined castle in the mountains, Hans and Elsa lingered over a last glass of watered einervijn, a plate of midnight sandwiches picked over between them. The table they shared was strewn with hundreds of pages of notes. Just as it had been for the last week, ever since Hans and Blank had made their way up here.

"You know, I'm really starting to regret taking so many notes," Hans said, not for the first time, tossing aside the book on the _Isloga's Foam_.

"Let's take a break," suggested Elsa. "My brain is mush, too." Blank, detecting their general shift away from work, lifted its head and demanded scratchies.

"It really missed you," Elsa said softly, watching Hans pick through Blank's ruff for chunks of ice to feed back into its mouth. "It howled for three days straight when it realized you weren't coming back. I had to raise an autumn storm just to drown out the sounds of its crying. The horses were going mad in the stables. It was _awful_ , Hans."

Just now, Blank was purring as if it had never been unhappy in its life. Hans got down on his knees to pay it proper attention.

"It finally calmed itself down, but it never stopped thinking about you. Anyone could see. And then, when Nephew returned without you, it ran away up here. I found it having a blizzard on your bed, couldn't calm it for anything, couldn't reason with it. But then, when I finally gave up and went back down the mountain, it came with me. Still, it didn't make a sound for two weeks, not a whisper until you came home."

Hans, who had never in his life been missed before, buried his face in Blank's fluffy flank and blinked furiously.

"When I got your letter," she went on, "the way you wrote— like you thought you might not come back— I didn't know what to do. Of course, all your notes and your research were already helping us. Stigr's Cabinet was building a case. Again and again I would remind myself that it was all for the best. But I would lie there at night sometimes, unable to fall asleep, wondering, What if you really don't come back? What if you don't come back because you can't? What if it's because you _won't?_ "

"I wouldn't do that to you," said Hans fiercely, looking up at her. "I _won't_. Not now. Not after everything."

"I know that, Hans. But it's so easy to be afraid at night."

"I know it is," said Hans. "I was afraid for so long. No more." _The only person who can hurt me is you_ , he remembered.

"Why not?" she asked, her hand creeping through Blank's fur to rest near his, not touching.

"It's hard to imagine any worse feeling in the world than the ones I've already felt. I've already done the worst I can do, been hurt the worst I can hurt. And you— you still wanted me for something. You saw that I could have some value. You sent me out into the world to do a job, and I did it, and now the world...maybe the world is better because of something I did with my own hands and my own eyes and my own mind. I was a cold, empty thing, and you filled me."

"Hans…"

"And that's why I have to make amends to Anna."

Elsa stopped petting Blank.

"What?" she said flatly.

"If she doesn't want to see me, I'll write a letter," said Hans. "If she doesn't want a letter, I'll...I'll do whatever you say is best. But I have to do something."

"Why now?" asked Elsa.

"It's time," said Hans. "I should have done it years ago, only I didn't know how. But I do now. I know that all I can do is apologize. I know she may never forgive me— I won't blame her if she doesn't, curse or no curse. But I have to do it anyway. I should have done it long ago. I was a shell, then, and a shell can wither and whimper and avoid, but a person can't. I mean to be a person, Elsa."

"You really want to do this?"

Hans looked up at her, took strength from Blank's cool bulk. "If it's all right with you," he said. "If it's all right with her."

Elsa rose, pulled her gloves on. "I'll ask her," she said.

* * *

Hans waited outside Princess Anna's sitting room. Muffled voices could be heard inside, but Hans could make out no words. Blank thrummed watchfully in a pile around his feet, and Hans stared at his face in a mirror hung on the wall. The mirror was mottled and green with age, its frame flaking gold, and the face that looked back from it was no less marred. His beard— kept neatly trimmed always, now— betrayed the presence of scars underneath by growing in occasional whorls. His nose had seen better days, his cheekbone was still stained faintly yellowish-green from Jorl's ministrations, and his eyepatch destroyed what pleasing symmetry might have remained.

The only comfort Hans could take from his own reflection was that it did not, at least, look anything like Prince Hans Westergaard of the Southern Isles.

The door opened, and Kristoff beckoned Hans inside. "The snow thing has to stay here," he said, half-apologetically. "It freaks Anna out."

Blank grumbled at this but did not argue, and Hans walked into the room alone.

Anna sat between Elsa and her giant of a husband, while the little snowman Olaf wandered around at will. There were no others in the room, unless you counted Anna's already-visible pregnancy. She looked well-suited to it, her pleasant face rounded out still further, her girlish braids wound around her head in a crown, her frock exchanged for robes which were roomy enough to accommodate the growing child.

 _She might have been your wife_ , Hans thought. _That might have been your child_. The thought made him feel nothing but a wash of half-shamed relief.

He bowed low, and waited.

"You wanted to say something?" Anna said finally.

"Yes, Your Highness," said Hans. He'd rehearsed it and rehearsed it, but he still wasn't sure he could get it out.

"Well, say it," snapped Anna.

"I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry I left you for dead. I'm sorry I tried to kill your sister. I'm sorry."

"My in-laws tell me there might have been a...supernatural influence on your behavior that night. They say you had a curse on you, that turned you so unexpectedly homicidal. Do you feel this exonerates you? That you have nothing now to be sorry about?"

Hans thought about it. It would be so pleasant if he could live without regret. Then again, if he could live without regret, he wouldn't be Hans.

"Four years ago I visited your kingdom," he said slowly, "hoping to find a wife. I found you, and you were kind, and happy, and...and playful. You were the sort of person people want to be around; I wanted to be around you. I did not love you, but I liked you. I thought that was enough. Where I come from, it would have been enough. I did not understand, because I chose not to understand, that it could never be enough for you. That is something the trolls cannot be blamed for. I'm sorry I used you, and grateful I was stopped before I could involve you further in my shipwreck of a life. You deserved better, and I hope...I _believe_ you've found it. Whatever culpability the trolls take for my...for my decision to raise my sword against your family, no one but me can be blamed for my trying to marry you as a means of escape."

"Thanks, I guess," said Anna, raising her eyebrows. "Er, Elsa says you saved her life before you tried to kill her. Before you tried to kill _me_. Up in the mountains. Is this true?"

He'd tackled one of Weselton's men before he could loose a bolt at Elsa, and the bolt had struck the chandelier instead and sent it crashing to the ground. That was what Elsa remembered, and what she must have told Anna. But there was more she couldn't know.

The shockwave caused by the falling chandelier had knocked Elsa unconscious, and Weselton's men had advanced on her to finish the job. He'd drawn his sword and fought them off until the sound of Marshmallow's approach scared the men away. Then he'd gathered her up, carried her down those treacherously slippery steps to his horse, and brought her down the mountain. She'd been so small in his arms, so fragile-seeming, even though he knew she wasn't. All he'd wanted to do was keep her safe.

"It's true. I did save her...once."

The little man Olaf had meandered close and was peering up into Hans's face. He looked down at him, surprised to see cautious sympathy in the childish face. _Olaf is a part of Elsa, but he's part of Anna too_. Looking at Olaf, he had the courage to say one thing more.

"I knew she didn't like me. But that didn't matter. She loved— she loves— _you_. I saw it...I didn't understand it, Your Highness, but I saw how hard you were fighting to be together even though you were strangers. I didn't…" Olaf's eyes widened expectantly. "I didn't know family could be like that. I'm glad it is, for you."

Olaf spun and waddled back to Anna. "I think he means it," he whispered. Anna hushed him, but her eyes were thoughtful.

"Would everyone mind giving me and Hans the room?" she asked suddenly. "You too, Olaf."

"Anna, are you sure?" said Kristoff.

Anna nodded firmly.

"I'll be right outside, dear," said Elsa. She kissed Anna's cheek and pressed her hand. She looked at Hans as she passed him on her way out of the room, but he could not interpret her expression. Then he was alone with Anna.

"Is it true that you fought off Weselton's men before you brought my sister down from the mountain?" asked Anna. "Or did she get it wrong?"

"It's true, but how did _you_ know that, Your Highness? Did _who_ get it wrong?"

"Marshmallow," said Anna. "She can't talk, but she can make rough pictures if you give her big enough pieces of chalk. After we sent you back to the Southern Isles, she kept drawing this picture in the plaza, always the same. A red-haired swordsman standing over Elsa, lying on the ground, with other figures off to the side. At first I thought it was, you know, what happened on the fjord. I didn't understand why she kept drawing you killing my sister, over and over again. I begged her to stop, but she just shook her head and drew it again. Then Kristoff noticed that the swordsman wasn't facing Elsa, he was facing away. Defending her against...the others."

"Weselton's men. Marshmallow found us. She frightened them away, so we could escape."

"Why didn't you say anything about this? Why...why didn't you _defend_ yourself this whole time?"

Hans shook his head. "What could I say?"

"You could have told us you were cursed."

Hans looked at her in surprise. "But I didn't know I was," he said. "I thought I was just…"

"Just evil?" finished Anna, when he did not go on.

Hans shrugged and said nothing.

"It's a struggle, knowing what to think," said Anna. "It came out of nowhere. Those things you said to me— I thought I could trust you. You hurt me terribly, Hans."

"I know. I'm so sorry." Hans hung his head.

"But I also understand that you were...not yourself, in that moment. It's comforting, although not completely. How do we know it won't happen again? Elsa obviously wants you to keep doing whatever you've been doing to her Navy. If you're just going to go all murdery again...well, you see our dilemma."

"The Queen said something similar," said Hans. "She brought me to see the trolls before sending me to the ships. But they didn't give us a particularly straight answer."

"They wouldn't," said Anna. "Kristoff says they won't help you unless they like you, and they won't like you unless you have something they want. They make for peculiar in-laws, but I suppose they're better than nothing, and they've always been nice to me. I'll have to think about this."

Anna fished in a pocket for a water cracker, which she nibbled absentmindedly while regarding Hans.

"I just have one more question," she said.

"Your Highness?"

"When you proposed: what would you have done if I'd said no?"

"I'm not sure," said Hans. "Probably I would have just gone home. I suppose it would have depended on you."

"I see," said Anna. "Well, just so we're clear, as far as Elsa is concerned, that is a _hard_ no, the no-est no ever to no, a no to end all noes."

"Your Highness, I don't—"

"Don't bother. It's obvious. You look at her like you never looked at me. But believe me, no matter how you look at her, it will _always be no._ " She finished her cracker, brushed the crumbs off her skirt.

"Oh, very well. I accept your darn apology. Go away now, I want to take a nap."

* * *

 **A/N: Happy winter everyone!**


	17. The Second Mission

Much of the crew of the _Våren Fryse_ had been detained as soon as they entered Arenby Harbor. The records extracted from the book of poems led Elsa's soldiers to untold quantities of stolen assets, hidden over the years in hundreds of secret troves by Admiral Bruin. The ensuing court-martial spanned several ships and several dozen high-ranking officers, brought in on charges of fraud, perjury, obstruction of justice, and treason. It would take years to untangle.

Hans's own involvement in the affair had of course been subject to intense scrutiny, his identity exposed and dissected. Many of the accused had pointed to his history as proof that his word could not be trusted, but as his word was the least of the evidence compiled over the winter, this hardly mattered. Convicted officers were punished according to their crimes: stripped of their ranks or demoted, made to pay restitution, imprisoned, exiled. Those convicted of high treason were hung.

Still, during meetings of her Cabinet, Hans cautioned Elsa not to allow it to become a witch-hunt.

"In better times, harsh punishment might be justified for lesser offences, but if you aren't careful to temper justice with mercy, you will end up with no Navy at all. As it is you're losing ten percent of your command force. Promotions will have to be made, and all these new officers will need to be trained. Luckily, you still have plenty of good men left, who will finally have the opportunity to be entrusted with meaningful command. It will be a rocky period, but this is the beginning of a good thing."

 _If we can just keep my bloody brother from attacking while you're weak._ Rumor had it that Caleb's Navy had begun to splinter, that some ships had flocked to Jens's side and that more would surely follow. If they were lucky, that would put an end to Caleb's expansion plans. If they were unlucky...

"Half your problem was morale," he went on. "Seeing the rotten branches pruned will no doubt improve matters on its own, but there are other things that could be done, other systems implemented to ensure your navy's loyalty and effectiveness. Most of your officers have seen little action these last ten years, and will need training. They are not prepared to fight even pirates and brigands; if the Southern Isles attack, even at half-strength, your Navy will be destroyed."

"And when is that going to happen, exactly?" said Minister of Intelligence Agot rather snippily. "King Caleb has more than enough on his plate with this coup Prince Jens is brewing. Every Westergaard in the hemisphere seems to have an opinion; the Jens supporters and their families have fled Kongenhaavn for Øglas, where they are busily fortifying their position. The Caleb supporters are split between troubles in the family and the King's plans to claim Arendelle. Rumors abound that Caleb is illegitimate, or mad, or dangerously ill; and that Jens is a scheming upstart who would kill his own brother in cold blood if given the chance. Everyone has an opinion. The only prince who hasn't weighed in, as far as I can tell, is _this_ one." She looked pointedly at Hans.

"I'm no longer a prince," he said quietly, "nor do I wish to be."

"If you think one flashy dog-and-pony show strikes your name and your crimes from the record, sir, you may think again."

"His crimes have been tried and pardoned—" Elsa began.

"As Minister of Intelligence," Agot interrupted, "I should have been more involved in your naval investigations, and made aware of Mr. _Skide's_ true identity. I have been kept shamefully uninformed from start to finish! As for his so-called _trial_ —"

"You were not invited," said Elsa coldly. "Perhaps, had I been better able to rely on the intelligence you have been providing since your appointment as Minister, I would have consulted you more thoroughly in the matter of the naval investigation. As I said, his crimes have been pardoned and his identity is not under question right now. This meeting is to discuss what must be done about my Navy. As Mr. Westergaard's research shows, it requires training and further observation. Admiral Stigr, you are familiar with the transformation wrought upon the _Nordlys_ under Hans's supervision?"

"I am, Your Majesty. Something of a legend, the _Nordlys_. Practically a prison-ship to start with, but she emptied out the Pirate's Highway in a matter of years. She has lost ground since her change in command. Our merchant ships have been feeling her fall from grace most acutely."

"As you are aware," said Elsa, "it was Mr. Westergaard's command that performed such miracles on the _Nordlys_. I desire him now to perform miracles on a larger scale. It is my opinion, Admiral, that Mr. Westergaard would make a suitable addition to your Cabinet. I want him to visit my ships and take a more open hand in their training, with some freedom to recommend further tweaks to personnel as he sees fit. Do you agree with this course?"

"I agree wholeheartedly," said the Admiral.

"Then it will be done," said Elsa. "Hans Westergaard, I hereby name you an Advisor to the Navy of Arendelle. Do you accept this office?"

"I accept, Your Majesty," he said.

"Good. Meeting adjourned."

* * *

The days were growing long again. This time last year, Hans had been a prisoner in the ruined castle in the mountains, Urgma and Blank his daily companions, with nothing to do but stew upon his failures. What a difference a year made! He was busy all the time now, making final plans with the Admiral about how to train a whole Navy in one season.

On the night before he was to sail for his first appointment, he and Elsa shared one last quiet meal of pickled herring and black bread. Blank seemed aware that Hans was going to leave again, and was manifesting both its anger and its sorrow by refusing to be in the same room as him, so they ate alone, missing their snow pile. Tomorrow, Hans would begin work, traveling from ship to ship, training the officers and seamen, updating their drills, improving their methods. He would also work closely with the new Admiral of the _Våren Fryse_ on training the ships to engage in formation. Blessedly, Elsa's navy had more of a head-start than the untrained convicts on the _Nordlys_. The difficulty would be one of scale. _Train the officers to train the men_ , he reminded himself, whenever the task began to overwhelm him. _No need to do everything yourself_.

But that was tomorrow, and this was tonight.

"Just try to make it back in one piece," said Elsa. "You always seem to come back to me damaged in some way. You will take care, won't you?"

"Of course I will," said Hans. "It's only going to be training exercises, anyway."

"Is that supposed to convince me it's safe?"

"Nephew will be with me," he pointed out.

"I know," she said, "it's just— sometimes I wonder if you're _trying_ to get yourself killed. Promise me you'll try to stay alive, and in one piece, and I'll worry a lot less."

"You have my word," said Hans, raising his glass facetiously. "I will not try to get myself killed. But you know, if you really want to keep me from going off and dying gloriously for Arendelle, you should accept The Duke of Sorbukt. He's got the best private fleet north of Kongenhaavn and the gold to buy another, and he's been proposing marriage for what, three months now? Marry him and your naval woes are at an end, and I can be out of your hair."

She scowled as ferociously as Blank itself could do. "I'd rather solve my Naval woes myself, thanks. The Duke of Sorbukt says a woman should not rule alone. If I married him, you know in six months he'd be saying a woman should not rule at all."

"Well, they're a bit backward in Sorbukt," Hans allowed. "I hear Prince Theopold of Edapest has been paying you rather a lot of attention lately." Prince Theopold was vastly wealthy, not in line for a crown of his own, an experienced statesman, and a proven ally to Arendelle. He was also the right age, more or less, and supposed to be extraordinarily good-looking. He was a favorite contender for the Queen's hand, if half the talk in the streets was to be believed.

"Prince Theopold…" Elsa began, and stopped, stymied. Hans had to laugh.

"Can't think of any drawbacks, can you?"

"Give it time," she said darkly, folding her arms.

"Why do you give none of them a chance?" Hans asked quietly, his smile gone. "You'll have to marry _someone_. You must know that."

"I know no such thing," she said. "Anna's always wanted a big family, she's got a child on the way already. Let the crown pass to her. It isn't as if the family name is in danger."

"But—"

"Oh, what's it to you, Hans?" she asked, not angrily but wearily. "Why should you care?"

Hans stared at the glass in his hand without really seeing it. _Because if you marry, perhaps I'll learn my place_ , he thought. _If you marry, I'll get over you. I won't stop loving you— not that, never that— but perhaps I'll stop wishing it could be different between us._

"No reason."

"Fine, don't tell me," she said, giving him a sad smile. "It doesn't matter. How's this for an answer: I'll marry when you do." She rose to her feet and came around to where he sat, rested one hand on his shoulder.

"So, never." _I won't see you again till the winter_ , he thought, _and by then you might have found yourself a Prince Consort, no matter what you say now_. On an impulse born of that thought, Hans caught her hand in his and pressed his lips to it.

He should have stopped there. He almost did. He almost let go of her, almost let it remain a simple gesture between two friends. Almost, almost.

But then she let out a sigh that was half a sob, bent lower and kissed him, her lips still tingling with einervijn.

"Your Majesty—" he began, but then she bit his lip, hard, and he forgot what he was going to say.

"Don't you dare talk sense into me," she murmured. "Don't you _dare_." Her tongue dipped into his mouth and her hand went down to cover the growing bulge in his pants, and just like that his resolve was gone. In another moment he was ripping her out of her bodice, burying his face in her breasts, biting gently at them to see the red marks his teeth left in their soft paleness, brushing his thumbs against the hardening petal-pink nipples.

Elsa wriggled a little and her dress puddled at her feet. She stood with not a stitch on but her stockings, tied with little ribbons just above her knees, and seemed suddenly nervous.

"Is it...all right?" she asked, biting her lip. Hans dragged his eyes away from the pretty triangle of brown hair at the joining of her white legs, past the smooth belly and the exquisite breasts and the slender neck, to meet her gaze.

"It's—" he said, dry-mouthed, and then nodded, and then swallowed. "God I wish I had both eyes right now," he said, inanely.

Elsa giggled suddenly, relieved, and dropped herself in his lap. Then they were kissing again, and he was touching every part of her he could reach: arms, ribs, collarbone, throat, navel, the tender flesh of inner thighs. He brushed the soft fluff of hair between her thighs, slid a finger softly down the slippery-wet cleft underneath. She breathed heavier when he did this, and heavier still when his thumb began to stroke rhythmically.

Soon she grabbed his wrist, ordered him breathlessly _Don't stop_ , and began to rock her hips, rubbing herself against his hand. She leaned over him, her face buried in his neck, her lips mouthing wordlessly against his collar. He curled two fingers _up_ and _in,_ and in another moment she was clinging to him for dear life, digging her nails into his biceps and crying out hoarsely. Any shred of restraint left him then, while she gasped and ground in his lap, and a moment after she had gone quiet and slumped forward in boneless torpor, he did too.

They sat like that for a while before either of them noticed Blank's plaintive yowling on the other side of the door. The yowling grew louder, and soon began to be accompanied by floor-shaking _thumps_ as Blank threw its weight against the heavy wooden door.

"I'd better let him in," said Elsa, regretfully disentangling herself from Hans's fingers and standing up. "Come on, help me with my dress before Blank wakes up the castle. Oh, look, you ruined my braid." He helped her on with her shoes, then stood and fixed her hair with a few deft movements. His hands came to rest briefly on her shoulders, and he took a deep breath.

"Elsa, I, um, I just want to—"

"If you're thinking of apologizing," she said without looking at him, "you'd better stop thinking it."

"How did you know?"

"How could I not?" She faced him, smiling; but her smile crumpled almost at once. For a moment even Blank was quiet on the other side of the door. Elsa tangled her fingers in his hair and pulled him close, planted the smallest of kisses on his lips and whispered,

"Come home safe, Hans. Remember, your life belongs to me now."

* * *

Hans stood on the bridge of the _Våren Fryse_ and surveyed the sea below him. The late autumn sun still lingered in the south-west sky, casting light but no warmth over the seascape. The _Fryse_ and a dozen other ships were practicing battle formations today, as they had been for weeks. Before that, the ships had run solitary exercises, drilling everything from the loading and firing of cannons to sharp maneuvering to boarding another ship quickly. Hans's biggest problem at the outset had been crews more used to gaming and song than tactical drilling. Ten years of peace should have been a boon, an opportunity to hone their strength; instead, the Navy had languished, and not all took kindly to Hans's insistence that they throw down their tankards and drill, drill, _drill_. Even with Aleks and Nephew to assist him, Hans sometimes found it all he could do to keep the men from open mutiny.

To be sure, some of the men under his direction liked him; others, whatever they thought of him personally, were grateful to him for shuffling the ranks and giving them the opportunity to advance after years of stagnation. But some had enjoyed their years of ease and were in no hurry to lose them. Hans's first action on a new ship was always to set immediate drills, a level or two more challenging than what the men were used to. Most of the men grumbled, which he expected. Some of the men balked. Those that balked at commands were disciplined, and usually fell in line after that.

Those who did _not_ fall in line were dishonorably discharged.

After a week of familiar drills, Hans could begin introducing new techniques. When they had learned the rudiments of these, Hans left them with instructions to continue practicing as if their lives depended on it, and moved on to the next ship.

It was a rough and dirty method, but it was necessary to begin somewhere. Later, there would be time for finer honing. Now, they simply had to be ready to defend the kingdom. Minister Agot believed the attack would come in the spring, when the icebergs around Arendelle began to clear. In the spring they must be ready, and it was already almost winter.

In time the fleet sailed into the frigid Skalding to acquire training in cooperative attack and defense. Hans hoped a few pirate ships might sail into their path, to give the men some practical experience so they were not utterly green when Caleb's forces fell upon them. Hans had gotten the idea from watching a mother blackfish catch a grizzly seal and bring it, injured but alive, out into the waves for her calf to practice on.

Though most pirates were too clever to come blundering into the middle of a fleet, they trapped a few. This training strategy had been shockingly, and immediately, effective: crews that engaged improved ten times as fast as ones that didn't, and in single battle the best of Elsa's fleet could have given a fight to the _Wind's Mistress_ herself. Even better, the brief action whetted their appetites for more. It was easier to take pride in training that had already been put by use.

But it was not enough. Elsa's fleet was improving, it was true. They were still too green, too small, too vulnerable to be able to do more than fend off an attack until help came from Corona or Vakretta.

Hans, seeing nothing on the horizon now, went down to watch a muster on deck. His legs were steady, his balance strong and sure on the rolling, sea-sprayed deck; but his chest was tight with a worry that never left him.

No matter how far they'd come or how quickly, they still weren't ready _._


	18. Action At Sea

Winter rolled over the Skalding, and still they trained and drilled and skirmished with pirates, and in the few hours of sleep Hans got at odd hours he dreamed about her. Dreamed of her kneeling, Caleb's knife at her throat, her country lost. Dreamed of her too proud to kneel, the knife laying her open. Dreamed of himself too late to save her, too weak, too cursed.

Whatever she might say about the crown passing to Anna's children, Elsa might find herself forced to marry to save her country. Hans selfishly hoped he would die before he had to see that happen. He'd thought he could keep his love for her pure and chaste, and perhaps he could have if she'd gone on loathing him like she was supposed to. What was he to do now that she didn't loathe him— perhaps even liked him? What was he to do with the easy familiarity that had sprung up between them? With the playful banter, the quiet evenings of work and conversation, their shared devotion to Blank?

What of his final night in Arenby, when she'd climbed naked in his lap and demanded of him what he would never have dared to offer? No matter how cold it got here in the Skalding Sea, the memory of her small weight in his arms kept him warm. He would have given anything to forget.

A shout sliced into Hans's ruminations: the lookout had spotted something on the horizon. All at once, Hans's mind was focused only on the work at hand. The _Skybird_ 's lookout began relaying information:

The nearby _Waker_ had spotted an enemy. Unclear whether the enemy was a pirate ship or something worse; all ships in the fleet were to maintain readiness.

Soon the message came in: the enemy flew the flag of the Southern Isles. And it was not a single scout or a merchant ship.

It was the whole damn navy.

* * *

Hans ran, skidded over blood on the deck, righted himself and ran faster. Pieces of the _Skybird_ exploded around him, and pieces of her crew as well. If he'd had his pick of the fleet, the _Skybird_ was not the ship he would have chosen to be on when Caleb's forces bore down on them out of the blue. She was maneuverable, it was true, but she carried few arms and could not attack, only dodge. She was only a small cutter, dwarfed on all sides by heavy frigates.

One thing was a blessing: he was in good company. Nephew and Aleks, both Lieutenants now, were with him. And the _Skybird_ 's crew, down to the last cabin boy, were loyal and quick-witted. They had taken to their training well and immediately, and Captain Ingolf had proven himself a dozen times already in this battle.

"If we cannot attack," he'd shouted over the roar of cannon-fire, "we must defend! Let those Southern scum just try us; they'll find we have some heat in the North!"

He'd ordered the _Skybird_ to maneuver between the heavier man-o'-wars, pivoting on her sharp keel like a dancer, skipping across the wakes the bigger ships sent up and playing them what tricks she could. She was always underfoot until the foot came down, and then she disappeared like a mouse into a hole.

The Arendellian navy was doing well, Hans noted with bleak approval in a lull. He'd climbed up into the rigging, hoping for a better sense of the overall picture, but the picture was of no comfort when he saw it. Caleb had not broken their line yet, but the line was wavering. They were doing well, and they would still be crushed. Caleb's forces were simply too powerful, his attacks too relentless, his men too seasoned and his ships too sturdy. They had no weak points. They had no—

Wait.

Hans whipped out his spyglass and trained it on a shape in the distance. One ship had caught his eye days ago, and he had marked her progress since then with interest. She seemed to be captained by a madman or an idiot, or both: she attacked where Arendelle was strong, left Caleb's flank open for long stretches and had to be signalled back into place, and broke formation more than once. As a result, she had been relegated to the rear in recent days.

A waste of a good ship. The _Nordlys_ was so small and deft, she could have bled Elsa's Navy with a thousand small cuts. But Caspar didn't have a damn clue what to do with her; he seemed to think he was captain of a much larger ship. He was brave, Hans would give him that: brave to the point of recklessness. He had always been so.

Their father had given Caspar the _Nordlys_ in hopes that he might burn off some steam in the frigid North before settling down to raise taxes on a family estate somewhere. As if the _Nordlys_ were a toy to tire himself out on before it was time for his nap. Caspar could have captained the ship straight to the bottom of a trench and the old King would barely have raised an eyebrow. In fact Caspar had done just that with his previous appointment, which was how he'd gotten moved to the _Nordlys_ in the first place. To his father, and evidently to Caleb, it did not matter what Caspar did with a ship of small size and smaller account, crewed by cannon fodder. Hans suspected the crew might feel differently about things. There was a phrase they used for situations like this one: _A gold ship with a paper captain_.

He wondered if Georg was still first mate, if Blacktooth Jan was still First Lieutenant, if Fittaker and Old Ivan and Young Ivan still manned the deck. He wondered what they thought of their paper captain.

He wondered why Caleb had brought the _Nordlys_ along at all and guessed that the rumors must be true, the Navy of the Southern Isles had splintered and now Caleb could not afford to leave a ship behind. What an absolute dolt, to take the offensive with only half a navy. Who was guarding the seas around Kongenhaavn? How did he plan to account for Jens? Caleb had always been hot-headed, it was true, but this was sheer lunacy.

Hans wondered what the lunatic might do if he was mocked in full view of his own Navy.

That night, the _Skybird_ took advantage of the deadening Northern fog to get as close as she dared to the _Nordlys_. A single rowboat, painted black both inside and out, put down from her side and rowed silently into the shadow of her stern. A figure in black made a nerve-wracking ascent to the darkened windows of the captain's office and secured several lines for his mates to climb, similarly camouflaged against the night.

A full score of men assembled in the office, as quiet as winter, as silent as snow. Two doors led from the room: one into the captain's sleeping berth, one out to the rest of the ship. Both doors were locked; the one leading to the rest of the ship would also, they knew, be guarded from the other side. Nephew oiled the hinges well and pulled their pins out, to open the door without touching the lock. Any muffled noises they made were absorbed by the snores emanating from the captain's berth, so the men standing guard on the other side of the door were easily taken by surprise. Most of Hans's men, armed with blades, gags, quantities of thin strong rope, and a roughly-sketched blueprint of the ship, melted into the belly of the _Nordlys_.

Hans and Nephew remained. Nephew opened the door to the captain's berth as he had the other, though in truth Caspar was snoring so loudly they probably could have broken through with an axe and raised no alarm. By the time he woke up, the gag was already in place, his hands already bound.

When his eyes landed on his brother, he looked so enraged Hans feared he might burst a vessel in his brain. Hans didn't say anything, just sat down to wait.

Within the hour, Aleks returned to the captain's berth to report to Hans, still without uttering a word.

 _Arsenal secured,_ he signalled. _Targets subdued. Proceed_.

Hans smiled his thanks, and hauled Caspar to his feet.

"It's your time to shine, brother," he whispered, putting a knife to his brother's throat. He dragged the captain of the Nordlys out onto the bridge where, to his delight, Commander Georg manned the wheel.

"The Captain is in custody," he said loudly and clearly. "I am taking command of this ship."

To his dying day, however soon that might be, Hans knew he would never forget Georg's expression as he turned to see the former Captain of the Nordlys detaining the current one. Surprise, delight, consternation, dismay and, strangely, delight again, flickered across his face. Caspar grunted and struggled against his bonds. Hans held the knife tighter against his neck. Georg's men, most of whom Hans remembered, stared mutely from their Captain to their Commander, hands on their hilts, and waited for orders which Georg was uncharacteristically sluggish about issuing.

"Surrender your arms immediately," said Hans, "and your safety and that of your Captain will be assured."

Still Georg did not move.

At that moment a young officer bolted onto the bridge. "Commander," he panted, "we've been boarded! Officers Morris, Junip and Burrough are taken, and the arsenal is held against us; they told me to—" He finally noticed the standoff taking place. "Admiral!" he exclaimed joyfully, then realized whose throat Hans was holding a knife to. "...Oh," he said dumbly, looking from Hans to Georg. "Commander?"

"Lay down arms," said Georg evenly, without breaking eye contact. "The whole crew is to lay down arms. The _Nordlys_ is yours, Ad— er, Hans."

At daybreak, just about the time when King Caleb was breaking his fast on coffee and sandwiches, two things happened at once.

First, the _Våren Fryse_ signalled the _Wind's Mistress_ that they had Prince Caspar of the Southern Isles in custody, and to stand down. Second, in the rearguard the _Nordlys_ hoisted the flag of Arendelle for Caleb's whole navy to see.

For a moment, even the wind held its breath, and Hans prayed as he had never prayed before.

Then the _Wind's Mistress_ gave the signal to destroy the _Nordlys_ , and Hans's prayers were answered. The Navy of the Southern Isles gave chase, weakening themselves just to take down one rogue ship. The _Nordlys_ was small and agile, and drew her pursuers far out of formation before taking a barrage to her hull that left her crippled. Had she been crewed by her own, she could not have been touched, but Hans had been unwilling to let the men he had once commanded veer so close to mutiny, and had sent them back to the _Fryse_ with Caspar as prisoners of war. The skeleton crew left behind did their best, but they were not the equal of a temperamental creature like the _Nordlys_.

By the time the _Nordlys_ was sinking, the damage to Caleb's fleet was done: while they ran around like headless chickens, the _Våren Fryse_ moved in on Caleb's core, and blood was in the water. The _Wind's Mistress_ signalled a new formation just before a hail of cannonfire from the _Fryse_ ripped her guts out. She was joining the _Nordlys_ on the ocean floor just about the time Caleb's Vice-Admiral was flying the flag of ceasefire.

By noon, Caleb's broken forces were in retreat. They had picked up as many survivors as they could on their way out. They did not find their king. They did find a red-haired man in black, clinging to the splintered mast of the _Nordlys_ , struggling to breathe through three broken ribs and the deadly northern cold.

* * *

 **A/N: Once again, please forgive me for the late update. I hope the wait was worth it! Our sweet boy!**


	19. Hans Of The Southern Isles

It hurt to breathe, Hans's arms would barely move, and the rest of him was terribly sore, but he was not, on the whole, ill-treated. He had a berth in the sick bay of a ship he did not recognize, but he recognized the uniforms of the men around him. Magenta and indigo, the colors of the Southern Isles.

Hans knew by the movement of the ship when they docked in the Southern Isles. He was bundled into a carriage on the quay and brought straight through the town where he had grown up. Inanely, for a while all he could think was, _When did Kongenhaavn get so small?_

But there was no time for such sentimental navel-gazing. Another thought demanded his attention: the town was hung in black. Black banners flew from every turret, black sheets from every window, black bands were tied around every arm.

The people shouted as the procession went by, "The King is dead! _Long live the King!_ "

They did not sound particularly sad about it, Hans thought as he was escorted to his old room in the palace.

* * *

It was another four days before Hans was brought before the King.

"Your Majesty," he said, bowing woozily. "Whatever happened to Pieter?"

"Our nephew has abdicated," said Jens calmly. "There is wine and food; be so good as to help me consume it."

Hans had never felt less hungry in his life, but eating gave him a chance to study his brother. Jens was seventeen years his senior, and they'd never been close. But Jens at least had never joined in on Caleb's torments, being always far too busy with more important things. He was well into middle age and looked it, the hair receding from his face, lines of care and worry etched around his eyes. He looked like a man with a lot on his mind. He looked like their father.

"I'm told you commandeered one of Caleb's ships and turned her against her own side," Jens said suddenly. "Is this true?"

Hans put down the sandwich he'd been pretending to eat. His head swam; he knew if he swallowed so much as a crumb now he'd be sick all over his brother's shoes. "It's true," he said. "The _Nordlys_. We seized her and she surrendered with honor. Her crew was blameless." Not that he expected his word to count for much.

"Yes, the _Nordlys_ ," said Jens, looking pained. "Caspar managed her right into the ground. I used to tell our father not to throw away a perfectly good ship on a moron like Cas, but would he listen? Ah, well. Our father was not without his faults, may he rest in peace. No, I'll not have your former comrades devoured by gulls, you needn't look so green about it."

At least there was that, Hans thought drearily. "And what of me? Can I expect to be hung for treason?"

"You won't be hung," said Jens. "How can you be? For one thing, we disowned you. I remember that part quite clearly. You were stripped of rank, title, and first-class citizenship; if it was treason you committed, it was technically only second-class treason, so at most you'd lose a hand." He regarded Hans thoughtfully. "But I won't be doing that, either. You know what they call a mutiny that succeeds, Hans?"

"A revolution," Hans answered. It had been a favorite saying of their father's.

"You'll be pardoned and reinstated in the line of succession," said Jens. "Title and rank will be restored to you. And you will have command of a ship again. I understand you've been serving in some sort of advisory role up in Arendelle. We both know that consulting could never be enough for a man of your talents. You belong at sea, Hans. In time, you'll be my Fore-Admiral, the second most powerful man in the country."

Hans did not answer. He couldn't seem to make his mouth work. _You belong at sea, Hans_.

He counted breaths. Ten, then twenty.

 _You belong at sea._ How did Jens know him so well? _You belong at sea._ He didn't think Jens had ever looked his way twice, yet he read him like a book. Wasn't this what he wanted, what he had always wanted? He would be a hero to his people, valued by his King, powerful and respected. The words rolled over and through him like a warm wave, dragging him inexorably back into his old life. It would be different this time. Better.

 _You belong at sea, you belong at sea,_ Jens's voice chanted in his head, but with each repetition it seemed less and less like Jens and more like their father. The words were dissolving into the lifelong current that had swept Hans along since childhood, and he could feel himself being pulled under. _So this is what it feels like to be cursed_ , he thought with sudden clarity. He'd never noticed before because he'd never tried to fight it before. He'd always longed so desperately to belong in this family that he'd done everything he was asked without hesitation. It had never occurred to him to disobey. And all along it had been the curse pushing him out, making him unwelcome in his own family, and the curse pulling him back in, too, so that he could never quite break free.

 _Look at him, Risa, he's not what we were promised._ Down and down he sank. _Perhaps he won't count._ Down, down, buried and drowned, too weak to kick for the surface. _It won't be any different from a stillbirth._

He would give in, obey as he'd done every time before. He would fall in line, remain in the Southern Isles, in thrall to the curse and to the legacy of the dead king, and Elsa would never forgive him. Jens was still waiting, and Hans _did_ belong at sea.

 _Your life belongs to me._

Hans stood so quickly his head spun, and he had to put a hand on the table to steady himself. "I...can't," he said faintly. "The Queen...I promised her. I promised I would come back." His father's voice chittered angrily in his ear and blew away like dry leaves on an autumn wind. His mother's covert glances, every vile thing his brothers had ever done— it all looked dim and unreal when he looked back it, from this side of the curse. But Hans himself felt _more_ real, more solid, more himself. He did not need a ship and a government post and the power to bend his brother's ear. He did not need his brothers' notice to prove he existed. _He_ knew who he was, and that was enough.

Jens, for once, looked surprised; but only a little, and not for long.

"Yes, I had heard you'd taken to warming her royal sheets, but given your previous attempt on her life I supposed it errant gossip. Still, the nights are cold in Arendelle, and women can be _so_ capricious."

Hans felt his face grow warm. "It...it's not like that," he stammered, "you're quite—"

Jens shrugged and stood as well, clapping his hands for his guards. "Perhaps," he said, uninterested. "Go back to your Queen if you want. You're a fool for doing it, if you don't mind my saying so, but it's your choice. I'm sure I'll see you when I make my Coronation Tour in the spring. My captain of the guards will put you on a ship back to Arendelle."

Jens had always been abrupt to the point of rudeness, but he was level-headed and not above listening to counsel. Perhaps he would be a good king. He couldn't very well be worse than Caleb. Despite a decided lack of warmth between the two brothers, Hans felt reassured by their meeting.

"And one more thing," Jens added as Hans turned to go. "I'd appreciate if you would remind your Queen that I opposed this ridiculous invasion plot from the start. The Southern Isles and Arendelle _used_ to be quite neighborly and can be again, if you'll but exercise your powers of persuasion. I'm sure you won't find it too difficult; you always did have a silver tongue."

Hans turned toward his brother. "I will tell her everything that happened here," he said slowly, "as I saw it happen. But no more than that. If you want the Queen's respect, brother, you'll have to earn it yourself."

"I suppose you're her man now," said Jens, without particular rancor.

"I'm my own man," corrected Hans. The burden he'd carried since infancy had fallen away, and he was almost floating without the curse tethering him to the earth. He stepped out into the sunshine and knew, for the first time in his life, what it was to be free.

* * *

Hans rode to the harbor in the company of guards who didn't know what to make of him, and so elected to pretend he did not exist. It was the first time he had ridden a horse since Sitron, and he wanted badly to enjoy it— if only his chest were not so tight. His head felt stuffed with cotton. He missed Blank's rolling gait.

He was sailing home in company of several dozen Arendellian seamen who had been plucked from the sea during the battle. Jens was not using them to bargain for his own men back. It was, Hans knew, not an altruistic gesture but a political one. Jens's message was clear: _I did not sanction this war, nor do I recognize its legitimacy. There was no war, so there can be no prisoners of war, here are your men back, sorry for all the trouble._ Above all, _That was Caleb; this is me_. Politically expedient, but if it paved the way for peace what did the motive matter?

Hans hardly noticed the journey home. He didn't leave his berth after the first week; all he wanted to do was sleep, but when he slept he got no rest, so often did he wake to cough.

The ship's doctor checked his ribs, listened to his cough, and looked very serious, then told him he must make himself eat and drink. Hans tried, but he could not muster the appetite for more than a little thin gruel. After a few days, no one was allowed in his berth but the doctor, who checked on him with increasing frequency and concern.

By the second week, Hans could never be sure if he was awake or dreaming.

Sometimes Blank was there, and he felt better. Blank's familiar coolness was a blessing to his fevered skin. But when he reached out to run his fingers through Blank's ruff, digging for ice chunks, his arms buckled and would not obey.

Other times, _she_ was there, her skin and hair luminous in the near-blackness of his berth with its one tiny porthole. Dream-Elsa would bend over him and press her cheek to his face, her lips to his throat, her hands scooping down beneath his blankets to madden him. Once she slipped out of her blue dress and climbed in the berth with him, trying to chafe some warmth into his violently shivering limbs. He tried to say her name but could not form his tongue around the sound. She laughed in his face to watch him try.

"You think you're so unlucky, thirteenth son," she whispered, her breath tickling his ear. "I was always unlucky, too."

More often she fed him gruel and thin soup, saying, "Keep your strength up, thirteenth. You must keep your strength up, for me."

But he could not, because he was dying. His parents' fondest wish would finally be granted, much good it would do them now. They'd hated him so much their hate had turned solid, and he'd lived all his life with their curse. He'd been ready to die for a good long while and was not unduly bothered by the prospect. To die uncursed was more than he'd ever hoped for. What he minded was that he'd never told Elsa he loved her. That was cowardly of him. He'd always had a hundred reasons not to say it: it was insolent, it was selfish. Unspoken, his love was a purifying thing. To declare it was to make it somehow base. To speak it was to risk her inexplicable regard for him, on which he'd come so heavily to depend.

How foolish all that was! He must tell her because it was the truth, and because she deserved to know that she was loved. He knew she wasn't really there, knew she was a fantasy conjured by his fevered brain. But he struggled to tell her all the same, the dream-Elsa if not the real one, since it was the only chance he'd ever get: Hans knew he'd be dead before he saw dry land again. As dream-Elsa fed him and talked to him and urged him to keep down his medicine and keep up his strength, Hans was working up the nerve to get three words in a row out. But always, just before he managed it, her image grew dim and her voice distant, and she left him there, his declaration stillborn.

With increasing rareness he would have moments of horrible clarity, trapped in his dying body, watching the clouds roll past the tiny porthole in his berth, watching the ship's doctor fret and worry and finally give up.

"If you live," the doctor said once, "it'll be no doing of mine."

* * *

The shape of the ship's movement was changing. Hans felt it jarring up through the beams of the ship, through the berth and the straw mat and then through his glassy fragile bones. Choppier, shorter waves that struck the ship from all sides. They were coming in to harbor.

Hans blinked and when he opened his eyes again it was to behold a cloudless blue sky too pristine for late winter. He was being carried on a stretcher by two men. The air smelled like the Port of Arenby, and springtime, and snow.

Snow, and snow, and snow.

" _Hans_ ," said dream-Elsa, materializing beside him as she'd done so many times. "Hans, you came home; but didn't you promise not to get yourself killed?" She took his hand, her eyes urgent and hopeful and scared.

"I don't mind dying," he rasped.

" _I_ mind it," she said, squeezing his hand till he thought the bones might shatter. "I _mind_ it, Hans."

"Elsa," he whispered. "I never told you; I never could, and now I never will…" His breath ran away from him, and he subsided into silence.

"Told me what, Hans?" she asked. "Tell me now. You're here, I'm here."

"No you're not," he said. "Why would you be here?" She looked as if she wanted to interrupt. Dream-Elsa was fond of interrupting. "It doesn't matter," he reassured her. A coughing spell overtook him, bludgeoning his wasted body with blunt force. The dream woman by his side made soothing noises and smoothed his brow with cool, soft hands.

"Don't try to talk anymore, Hans." His eyes had fused shut in this last coughing-fit and he lacked the energy to open them; but he knew the shape and expression of her face without having to see. In his mind he traced the beloved contours of cheek and lip, long pert nose and eyes tight with care. She looked worried, but when didn't she? Her voice sounded close.

Any moment she would disappear again, or he would.

"I could...break a curse but I couldn't say a few simple words…" A rusty taste was on his lips.

"So much blood, oh gods—"

"I'm in love w— " Every syllable was a struggle.

"You...you're what?" Dream-Elsa's breath tickled his cheek.

But this was it, he could say no more, he couldn't even breathe. Even the Elsa in his mind was beginning to go dark. A foul wet wind rattled in his chest, but he couldn't cough anymore. He didn't have the strength.

"Hans! _Hans!_ " The dream was fading. Hans was conscious of a yowling blast of cold, and then he was conscious of nothing at all.


	20. Northern Bastard

There were voices. Some he knew, some he didn't. Some he'd forgotten.

Mostly, he heard _her_. Sometimes talking to him or to Blank. Sometimes reciting, or possibly reading.

"' _Mr. Skide, as I know him,'"_ she read, "' _come aboard the_ Gullfeather _in the fall, right after Captain Murstock was discharged for fraud and young Boris got the Captaincy. Half of us was swearing we'd never listen to no Bastard, and muttering and all, and it was bad that first week, till he had us in a mock-battle with the_ Longsheet _, where he'd been before. Well, they trounced us bad, and we made up our minds to trounce em worse the next time, and that was the end of the muttering…'"_

And,

"' _...Mr. Westergaard's quick thinking and quicker action has been the saving of us. We owe him our lives and Your Highness's, too. I only pray it is not treason to say so…'"_

"' _...The Admiral's tactical understanding is unparalleled. He regards the naval arena with an astuteness unusual in one of his years, taking in at one glance the strengths and weaknesses of his side, and the strengths and weaknesses of the other. For all his circumspection he lacks not for daring. Yet he is quicker to risk his own skin than his men's, and they respect him for it, even love him…'"_

"' _If anyone but the Bastard had asked me to scale a rocking warship in the Skalding Sea of a winter's midnight, I'd have laughed in his face and gone whistling to the cells for insubordination. But he asked me personal, by name, and said it had to be me. He said, 'Every man aboard the_ Skybird _has hands for climbing; only Midshipman Tomson has the feet for it, too.' I climbed the Nordlys in bare hands and feet, the better to grip, and nearly lost em to the cold, and I'd do it again for the Bastard…'"_

"They love you, Hans," said Elsa, her voice breaking. "Your men. From the Nordlys. We took them as prisoners of war but held them under house arrest, instead of in the dungeon. I've dined with Commander Georg several times, and a few of the other officers. They've done nothing but sing your praises, and the last thing you did to them was take them prisoner and steal their ship. How do you _do_ that? How do you make everyone love you, even when they know they shouldn't?"

He felt her lips just brush the tip of his nose.

"Die now," she whispered, "and I'll demote your boyfriend so fast it'll turn you in your grave. How does Seaman Aleksander sound, for the rest of his life? Die now, and I'll have your body shipped back to the Southern Isles to be buried in state with the rest of your family. Die now, and Blank'll never forgive you, or me. Would you saddle me with a disconsolate Blank forever? Die on me now, Hans, and I will never marry, but will grow to a bitter and lonely spinster, and it'll be all your fault. If you know what's good for you, you'll live until I grant you leave to stop."

* * *

Hans woke, blinking the long dream from his eyes, reeking of illness and old sweat. Blank, dozing on his legs, felt him stir and stared at him distrustfully.

"Yes, Blank," he whispered through an aching, dry throat. "It's really me."

Blank let out a yowl like a Nor'wester, leapt up and began frantically licking Hans's face and hands, heedless of the knives it called teeth that nearly took out his one good eye.

"Blank, down," said Hans, without real feeling.

"Blank, _down_ ," said a much more commanding voice, and Blank subsided, rumbling joyfully in Hans's lap. "What on earth's gotten into you?" Elsa had come in, still in her nightgown and robe, to see what all the noise was about.

"Hello, Elsa," said Hans.

Elsa let out a shriek louder than Blank's, and stumbled over to the bed.

" _Hans_ , you're _alive_ ," she shrieked, like she didn't believe it but was hoping to make it true by volume alone.

"Well, you wouldn't let me die," he pointed out. "Made all sorts of nasty threats. Downright un-Queenly, if you ask—"

She promptly collapsed to her knees, sobbing.

"You miserable, ungrateful, stupid, half-blind, red-headed _wretch_ of a man, I _specifically told you_ to come home safe, those were my words exactly, what part of _come home safe_ do you find so incomprehensible? Just _stop dying already_ , I can't have you dying ever again, I refuse! I won't allow it! I love you and you're _mine now_ , I'm _keeping you_ , and if you try this one more time I'll, I'll just…"

"You love me?"

The top of Elsa's head, which was the only part he could see, went still. She looked up at him, her tear-streaked face suddenly exasperated.

"Yes, _obviously_ ," she said, "and you _said_ you love me, so—"

"I...thought I imagined that. Whole thing. I didn't mean to— I thought I was dying, and you were a dream—"

"Oh, so that's all it takes to get the Bastard to tell the truth?" she said scathingly. "Honestly, I'm so furious I could spit, why didn't you tell me _before?_ "

She certainly looked furious, or something very close to it, her hair in total disarray, eyes blazing, cheeks pink, lips parted and panting.

"I didn't want to, ah, make things hard for you."

"Things are _already hard for me_ , Hans, I'm the _Queen of a whole country_ , or hadn't you noticed?"

"Yes, but—"

"Oh, stuff it," she said, rising to her feet. "I love you and you love me, and you're just going to have to deal with it. Stop pretending you can't feel good things too, Hans. Your love is a good thing, and it's a thing I want, a thing I'll always want."

She leaned over him, the wild tangles of her hair tickling his nose. She kissed his forehead, then his cheek, then, very gently, his lips.

He waited a moment, just to be sure she was not a dream, and then he kissed back.

* * *

"Hans," Elsa said several hours, a sponge bath and a bowl of porridge later, "did I really hear you say you broke the curse?"

"I broke it."

"But... _how?_ "

"My brother Jens— King Jens of the Southern Isles, now, and _that's_ a whole story on its own— offered to, er, reinstate me in the family. Give me a ship and a rank. Real power, to shape the Navy how I want. He's offered me all I've ever dreamt of, and more than I ever dared hope for."

"Oh, that's...that wonderful, Hans." Elsa tried to look pleased for him, and probably thought she succeeded.

"I turned him down," said Hans gently. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done; I wasn't sure I could do it."

"But— everything you've ever wanted," Elsa echoed. "Why give it up?"

"I promised you I would come home," he said. "I'd rather lose everything than hurt you again. I know what I can live with, now. I can't live with _that_."

"I know what I can live with, too," said Elsa, looking down at her hands still intertwined with his. "I can handle a lot of loneliness. I can suffer, and keep suffering, and stagger on and on, perhaps forever."

"You will never have to do that again," he reminded her. "Anna—"

"I love Anna, I do," she said. "I'm not talking about that kind of love. I want a _husband_."

Hans blinked. His heart sank into his stomach, the better to launch itself up into his throat. "Your Majesty, but you said—"

"You needn't quote me to myself," she said shortly. "I remember what I said."

"Am I... _understanding_ you?"

Elsa nodded, hand twisting in her lap.

"But your people, they would never—"

"You just saved my people from violent invasion. They're in a forgiving mood. Besides, they've been after me to pick a consort for ages now. If I go out on that balcony and tell them I'm marrying the palace chimney-sweep, they'll throw roses."

"And your sister?"

"She's coming around to the idea."

"She is?"

"She doesn't know it, but yes. She is. Keeps asking when I'm going to give little Agnarr a cousin."

"That doesn't mean—"

"A _red-haired_ cousin."

Hans swallowed. "Ah," he said helpfully. "They may not be redheads. Recessive trait, and all that. Fully three of my uncles were blond."

"As far as I'm concerned they can have snakes for hair," said Elsa. "Provided they're half yours and half mine."

Visions of ice-wielding snake-haired children running rampant around the Palace filled his head, and Hans laughed. Elsa caught his laughter and multiplied it, until the pair of them were giggling and breathless like children at play. Hans had never felt so light, weightless in his mind and in his body, his whole self thrumming with the nearness of her.

"I want you, but I've never dared want you," he admitted.

"I'll dare just about anything," said Elsa. "I love you, Hans. I know you, and I understand you. And I want you too." She flushed pale peach, embarassed by her own frankness. "From the sound of the letters that came pouring in while you were dying, everyone wants you. Hans Westergaard or Erik Skide."

"'Skide' means 'Bastard'," Hans remarked. "But you knew that when you gave me the name, didn't you?"

Elsa's blush deepened— from mirth, not embarassment this time. "Forgive me my private joke. You're not offended?"

"I'd rather be a Northern bastard than a Southern prince," he said sincerely. "'Skide'— it suits me. Suits me better than the old name ever did. As a Westergaard, I could never be more than the unlucky thirteenth. Now I can be anyone."

"So long as you're mine," corrected Elsa.

Hans leaned back and closed his eyes. He was tired from his illness, but comfortable. And safe. And loved.

"I'll always be yours," he said.

And he was.

* * *

 **A/N: Thank you so much for sticking with me to the end! I know I didn't have the most rigorous posting schedule but his has been a hard year for me and I've loved having this little community and this fun story to come back to! I hope you enjoyed it! Le me know what you think! If you have any recs for other interesting redemption fics, by all means let me know in a comment!**


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